“There seems to be more magazines about gardening then there are folks actually working in a garden”, the W.-factor wondered this summer when we were both  staring at the display of a newspaper kiosk, while waiting for a train to bring us home to town from a Swiss village.

“It is about sublimation”, I replied. “These magazines allow folks to dream and change their state. It is not about what there is, but it is about the sheer potentiality of what could be.” I continued. And while we kept on staring into the display, we realized that the need for sublimation seems endless. Horses, gardens, houses, cars, decoration, dogs, cats, tress, cooking….

My mind brought me back this picture of us inspecting the kiosk display while riding the Piccadilly line from Russel Square this October. I flew in to London via city airport which is quick and easy. My way out , after a training session on Friday with the folks from Les Senteurs and a scent getting together on Saturday,organized by Ronny from Scent and Sensibility, was via Heathrow on a very busy Sunday morning. The tube was already quite full with tourists from Spain (I never figured out why so many folks from Spain are visiting London). Then the two rushed into the coach, all sweaty and  smashing their suitcases somewhere and then they sat next to me.

She on my right, he on my left. A couple in their forties. Upper lower middle class, if you know what I mean.

We Swiss are not entirely accustomed to the concept of classes, as we only tend to think that we all belong to the wide, extra large middle class (actually, almost everybody belongs there). Thus, we have the middle class, and then the very rich that  got rich by getting heavy, undeserved bonuses (there are other rich folks but we do not talk about these in Switzerland it seems; somehow they are classless), and we have the folks with an “immigration background”, a term that fits with many as we are in the middle of Europe and quite attractive as country to our neighbors, one reason being taxes, but this is another issue.  Thus, I may miss some fine tunes there in judging my UK folks and to which class they belong.

“We should have taken the car!” , he will say angrily for the rest of the journey, at every stop.And then fall into oblivion again, watching a spot between his shoes.

“We will never make it”, she would reply, equally frequent  and equally angry. And between the stops of the tube, she would go through 3 magazines with gardens that were so photoshoped and perfect, that even the British subject’s Queen can only dream of such garden beauty.

My neighbor sitting next to me on my way to Heathrow went through the magazines, one after the other, and she sublimed between tube stops into a garden watching suburban dreamer.

I wondered how long it will take them to blame each other. They did not. I guess they were a happy couple.

Today’s picture shows you a scan from  Tatler’s magazine, featuring an article on horse and leather and a lot of recommendations for leather fragrances and some of their backgrounds, mentioning Lonestar Memories, as Brokeback Mountain fragrance. Happy sublimation ahead. Love it.

More reading for you today (tomorrow will be no post, I go for a hike):

EAU D’ÉPICES, featured and reviewed in Spanish by Una Aventura Olfative. Click here (English Translation via google possible).

Mandy Aftel and Andy Tauer: Letters to a fellow perfumer continued on Nathan Branch’s blog, with an interesting technical detail on the Linden blossom extract, directly from the producer. Enjoy!