Oh, I had such plans for this blog, back in the when. I had spoken to a number of perfumers who had suffered similar (and some very different, but still olfactory-related) conditions and I was going to make this blog more of a resource for smell-dysfunction sufferers, than a diary of my own condition. But then I think my life as a parosmic kind of took over, and I simply found it all too difficult to write about. The last two and a half years, since that fateful cold, have been dark, surreal and difficult, but not entirely without hope. However, if you're one of the readers who wrote to me me over the last 30 months or so, and were one of the ones I was unable to respond to because I was so wrapped up in my own situation, then please accept my heartfelt apologies. I'm sorry. I am very sorry. I didn't respond, not because I was ignoring those messages, or even because I didn't want to respond, but it was simply that it was too painful to relive my own situation ove
Did you hear the one about the parosmic who went to the perfume museum?* A trip to the Osmotheque perfume museum in Versailles seemed like a dream come true when I’d booked it through Odette Toilette in April last year. Billed as an opportunity to smell classic fragrances dating back as far as the 1800’s (in faithfully recreated “original” formulations), plus an opportunity to talk through the history of those fragrances with master perfumer Thomas Fontaine of Jean Patou, it was a trip genuinely not to be missed. I booked gladly, and forgot all about it for the best part of the year. Come November and the time to travel, however, the trip seemed more like a cruel joke put out by the universe. Having lost my sense of smell completely in the meantime, only to have it (partially) recover, and then discover that all smells were now completely distorted, being both disgusting and nauseating, a trip to a perfume museum under the circumstances seemed rather perverse, not to m