Carnet de Bal is a classic fragrance that was created by Maurice Shaller in 1937. It opens with citrus and fruit notes along with chamomile. The heart is floral with rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, lily and cyclamen, laid on a base of patchouli, oak moss, amber, vanilla and musk.
If I had to choose just one perfume it would be Carnet de Bal. Its beautiful bottle and gorgeous, thick brandy coloured contents graced our cold, tiny black and white bathroom in Stanmore just after The Second World War and continued to grace our pink bathroom in Pinner in 1964 for although the contents had long gone my mother and I could not bring ourselves to throw the glass bottle away.
My mother had been given the precious bottle in about 1939. It had already been opened but my mother was not a great perfume user and so it languished for years with the contents getting thicker and thicker until I got at it, in the early 1950's it was like treacle. My grandmother had loved Yardley's English Lavender and for everyday summer wear this is a delightful perfume as it has that hit of lavender with a sharp touch of zing that is missing from cheaper varieties, but Carnet de Bal has class. It is the perfume of desire and seduction and I loved the intoxicating smell of lust even then.
I loved holding the sensual bottle and sniffing its contents. I was not allowed to wear it as it was so overpowering but I was allowed to sniff. I can remember it glorious smell to this day. Over the years the bottle emptied until the perfume became a lost dream. It must have been in 1960's when it gave up the ghost and ever since I have been trying to recapture or buy a similar aroma but to no avail. It is the hit of orange and citrus that gets me. and as you can see from the description above written today that my nose was absolutely bang on. The perfumiers Revillon went out of business and so it was adieu to Carnet de Bal.
Then in 2015 along comes the internet. In a moment of indecision I played with perfumes on Google and I found Carnet de bal. Perfumes have become antique collectables. Sadly the bottle above was sold in 2008 for a hefty sum. The brandy glass shaped bottle is designed to stand upside down on its stopper. As I Googled down the page I came across Scentmatchers.com. I had never heard of such a thing but it seems that this group of talented perfumers can recreate all the discontinued fragrances of the past.
You see it appears that you cannot copyright a scent, aroma or smell. The only thing the expensive perfumiers can sell which is copyrighted is the name. You pay for the name and anyone on earth can recreate the smell. This firm has thousands of perfumes recipes and can recreate any fragrance you like and then you give it your name. It is not cheap but not that expensive either. I hesitated for a year and then I found them again. I rang them up and they answered, I thought what the heck and put in an order for not one but two bottles of Spectre de las Rose, my name, which I hoped would remind me of the happy hours I spent in the bathroom inside the airing cupboard cuddling the water heater because it was the only way to keep warm as coal was rationed with the heady smell of oranges and musk. Oranges too were unheard of and as children we got a delicious squash that came in a small bottle.
I told them I could remember the smell, even after 60 years. It is hard to believe but I remember smells, the smell of Covent Garden underground as I went to the ballet. was unmistakable, the smell of oranges and urine with a touch of cabbage, the smell of freesias touched with rain and the smell of coffee brewing on the hob.
Today the package from the USA arrived. Two beautiful glass bottles, in two black satin pouches, perfume hates the light, then the first spray and to my delight the wondrous smell of my youth hit my nostrils. It was being eight to eighteen all over again. I cannot thank the team at Scentmatchers enough for making my day. I have the fragrance again.
It is an enchanting perfume and I am so pleased it has not been lost. So if you have a yearning for a perfume of yesteryear give Scentmatchers a go. They might make your day too.
Adobe Muse users - Site won't load in Tablet design on an iPad? Won't scroll? If it does, it is jerky and sticks or freezes? Screen white down the side? Desktop and phone version working perfectly? At wits end trying to get the bloody thing to work?
Yet if you click and hold refresh button on the iPad Safari browser and choose Request Desktop Site the tablet site pops up and works perfectly with scrolls and all the whistles and bells? Sometimes Safari does go to the real Desktop site and you will see your actual Desktop working perfectly if a bit small.
I have had this problem for about a week, being a Saturday and Sunday did not help as Adobe and Muse support unavailable so I had to play about for hours to work out what was happening. I was almost going to jettison the Tablet version and just go with Desktop and Phone as the net browsers choose the smaller Phone version if given the choice. Not the best answer for me because the best phone versions are pretty, simplified lists.
Eventually after hours of chat to Adobe and a wait for a call back that failed to materialize I got an Adobe expert in India who knew how to solve the problem and it is simple.
Adobe has an issue with uploading Tablet version to the iPad at the moment. The problem is all scroll effects and third party widgets that use these. They stop or interfere with the loading and make it jerky, wrong screen size and make the iPad impossible to use. One has to have a set screen size not 100%.
The Answer?
At the moment it is to remove all scroll effects and third party widgets that use them from the Tablet and a set width size.
For me that meant virtually a new design.
Naturally I am pleased that now my site loads and scrolls like velvet, albeit in a very boring form.
Adobe you know this! Please put up a notice that we can find easily when we Google the issue, to tell your users the solution instead of us all having to reinvent the wheel. Time for most costs money. I have the luxury of being semi-retired but I am reaching the end of my sell-buy date so time for me is precious and I do want my site up.
Hopefully Adobe will solve this issue soon and issue an update. Please Adobe make it as good as Request Desktop Site upload so I can have a website worthy of what Muse can do and I can make my Dancing Angel fly again. Well scroll down and land on letter W!
Love Muse. It is just so clever and creative.
My site new site should be available in a few days at janette-miller.com but sadly minus all scroll effects. However I do have a very cool versa slide from Muse Themes that works a treat. Both Adobe and Muse Themes are great by the way and this is by no means a complaint but a suggestion in a kind and loving way!
Another mass shooting in America': Oregon killings a grim familiarity for US
Gun control.
To my USA friends who all seem to have difficulty with this subject.
Yet again the world watches in horror at another school shooting. Obama is right on this one. You ought to do something about it. Each one of you.
I can hear you all now saying What can I do to stop this carnage? Nothing! But you can! If you really wanted to stop it and I hope you do, you could. All it needs is public outrage and a strong politician who knows right from wrong and is not in the hands of the NRA. I put a stop to gun advertising on TVNZ many years ago.
To my horror I saw a TV advertisement late at night after 10 pm for Gun Shed, an outfit selling guns and ammunition from a large barn. To my mind this was indefensible so I made an appointment to see The Minister in charge of guns and TV advertising. His name was Jonathan Hunt and I went to see him.
I simply told the Minister how offensive and immoral I found this sort of advertising which if allowed to continue would only escalate and lead to deaths.
The Minister's reaction was immediate and authoritative. He told me that he had not known of these advertisements until I told him and they would stop! They did. All gun advertising was removed from NZTV for years. Just like that, although I expect it has crept back but as nobody watches TVNZ any more it is of little consequence. He did the right thing and stopped it.
That USA is how you do it if you really, really want to stop this murder. You all have to stand and say enough is enough. Obama will do it. He wants to do it. Let him and reclaim your country.
Welcome to My World and to my brand new Adobe Muse Website.
Janette-Miller/Heffernan welcomes you to her company and personal website. Here you will learn all the passions of the owner. Opera and ballet, bookbinding and philately, croquet, computers, gardening and trying unsuccessfullly to encourage all to make Do It Yourself Movies to share your passions. This is a site in progress and experimentation is the keyword. Nothing ventured nothing learned. Enjoy.
About three months ago Google decided it didn't like the way my www.janetteheffernan.com, website translated onto tablets and smartphones and dire consequences would ensue if I didn't do something about it. This of course did not happen but I did take a look at my old website, which still looks OK on Desktops and gave it a think! I can see if I ought to do something and mature enough to take action.
For a couple of years I have subscribed to Adobe Cloud as I did not like the new Final Cut Pro. I can use it but personally I don't like it so I made the decision to move to Adobe Premier Pro. I already used Dreamweaver , which authors websites a long time ago as that is where I made my first website in about 2008 and it has lasted well and looks good. As an opening page it points newcomers where they want to go and I may have to go back to that format.
The about three months ago Google said anything with Adobe Flash was out. As my first website is full of Adobe Flash this was the death knell so reluctantly I decided the time had come. I have better things to do than start coding again. So I have experimented with Adobe Muse and I have enjoyed every second. It is a dream when compared to Dreamweaver and for me as I am video editor I don't mind playing with it. This must be a nightmare for coders as they like things lean and simple and not unstable and creative.
I sell Bookbinding DVDs on the company site and am preparing to HD Stream but the image above is the home page of My World which is the personal section of my site where I feature all the things that interest me. Muse allows web designers to do things they never could before, like twirling cubes and angels that float in, this one dances if you click on it, she is the Angel of Life, below is a video time lapse and tabs for all my interests which will hopefully slowly get filled up. The Flash presentation will have to be replaced by a boring slideshow. Not all is progress.
So today or tomorrow www.janette-miller.com gets published. It will still be very much a work in progress. As well as a Desktop version it will have a tablet and smartphone versions too and these may need some sorting out as I do not need either of these devices so I have to rely on friends to help me out with the Beta testing stage. I might even get a tablet as Apple is making a new one in November with a pencil that sounds intriguing.
This is a special page as I need a landing stage for my Janette Miller Blog. This page will change as I move on. So Welcome to My World.
I had the luck to be at school with Jackie Collins who has just died of breast cancer. We were in the same class but it appears she was much older than me. We became students together at Aida Foster and we all knew her as the sister of Joan Collins who had been at the school and that, secret, secret, she had been expelled from her previous school.
I arrived at the age of 15 at Aida Foster Stage School in Golders Green. My ballet school AES which I loved was threatening to close down and my mother loathed the headmistress there because she felt she was cruel that I was taken away and dumped at Aida Foster as mother wanted me in musicals not ballet. There was nothing I could do.
Adia Foster was not academic. I was put in the GCE class to find that they were on page one of the arithmetic book and I am not joking. My education came to a full stop. I knew I was good at English and could put myself through GCE English with not too much problem and I decided to have a go at GCE English grammar, literature and history as I reckoned I could do those myself.
I was seated beside the only other two girls who it was thought might get a GCE, one was called Anne Flack and the other Jackie Collins both became firm friends although I had little hope of either being able to actually take the exams. Jackie had a penchant for yellow legal pads which were covered with a large childish handwriting and never seemed to do any work at all. I never thought anything of it at the time but I pitied both.
They might not have been good at English literature but both were good at life. My education began at the local Italian restaurant where we were allowed to go for lunch. Yes, we were allowed out for lunch and introduced to Italian Food for the first time spaghetti bolognaise of which I became particularly fond either that or my other and really best friend Marti Webb but she took me to the Wimpy Bar in Golders Green.
The restaurant was next door to the local police station but it was where the local flashers held out. Stupid really but they did and each day the three of us ran the gauntlet of the flashing gentlemen. Jackie had a thing about flashing gentleman and I see even to this day one of her last Tweets was on this subject. She used to yell at them not too subtle remarks, Like Ooo what a little one put it away. I was sort of shocked but these gentlemen did not shock Jackie Collins.
Jackie did not take the exam when I was there. I did. I got 87% for English Lit but was helped for 3 weeks by the most brilliant teacher I have ever met. A Mrs. Payne, who was tough and beautiful and taught me how to learn. I have a blog on her too. Jackie was beautiful and was a great model. I liked her. I left soon after as I was sexually assaulted by a student and just could not face going back. My father was furious with the school. I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and never gave Jackie Collins another thought.
Then years later I saw an article about this well known author in a New Zealand magazine and I saw the yellow legal, pad and the childish handwriting and I thought Hey I know that writing! I should recognise it anyway. As I went on a read that Jackie Collins had become a bestseller of lurid novels and one thing Jackie described in detail was our encounters with the flashers of Golder Green and I knew it was her. She was a million dollar writer without a GCE and I was an impoverished opera ballet producer with one.
Such is life. Nowhere in her biographies does Jackie mention her stint at Aida Foster although the Fosters were Joan's first agent and in fact one of the Baker Twins a student of the school and a friend of mine ruined Joan Collins's marriage to Antony Newly.
Maybe it was all too painful. It was for me. I am grateful to the Fosters for giving me confidence and make the best of myself. The Fosters did this for all their students and we all did well considering none of us had an education. What we all could have achieved if we had had one. Jackie Collins knew about life and her father could help her get started which was a great advantage. I admire her courage.
“There has never been a first-rank woman artist. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50% or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it’s something to do with bearing children.” Guardian
The above quote is taken from the UK Guardian obituary for the art critic Brian Sewell. (pronounced Theweul). He was a one off, a character who had the most witty and cruel repartee that was administered with a spoonful of sugar that no one could take offence. It was almost an honour to be criticised by him unlike Bernard Levin, the theatre critic in the 1960s who was generally hated.
Sewell is so witty and sharp as a razor that I can almost forgive him for being a misogynist. Almost but not quite.
Like Sewell my mother at the age of 9 took me to The National Gallery to look at art and when I got home I announced to my Major in British Army father that I should like to be a fine artist like Rembrandt.
To this day I can still recall his answer. He said, Look at history, there has never been a great woman painter. Women are not great painters! I became a ballet dancer. In my day women were the best at that.
But my father was wrong. Women were not great painters because they were not given a chance. Michael Angelo would not have done a thing if he had been a woman. Time will tell but the world of art is still biased against women.
Still Sewell will be missed. He had a delicious and amusing way of being horrid that sort of appeals to the worst in us. We are all so glad it was not us at the end of his very acidic pen.
Nice picture of Britten and Pears to illustrate the article by Rolf Hind but nowhere does Britten appear in the actual text itself. Britten was an enigma. Britten never came out during his lifetime and would have sued anyone who said he was gay.
Many of his friends and colleagues who knew him well, Graham, Reiss, Duncan, Katherine Mitchell and myself consider Britten to be bisexual. He was confused about his sexuality all his life and could never choose. Pears, Auden and others chose for him and Britten was always a good little boy.
It is only now that I am approaching the end of my life that I feel I must write for posterity what I have known for years. Humphrey Carpenter, Britten's official biographer, told me that I had to do this. I was to write down everything. He was going to do this for me but he died before it was published. I have his letters.
Because Britten was stuck for a young Flora I got to know him very well. He liked me and I liked him. I was 19 and it was allowed. Britten admired me and I admired him. Britten went out of his way to get to know me. Nobody noticed at Aldeburgh. It was as if I didn't exist until one night Peter Pears noticed and after that it was difficult but not impossible to be alone with Britten as Pears was always there! But that is another story.
In Britten's masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw Britten explores the theme of the choice of sexuality with considerable insight. It is as if Britten were Miles who cannot choose between the heterosexual love of The Governess or the homosexual love of Peter Quint both of whom Miles loved and at the same time hated to hurt in any way. At the end being forced to make the choice kills him. Britten never did make the choice himself. That is why this work is so compelling on all levels.
Never has the music of a homosexual lover sounded so enticing as the music Britten writes for Quint when wooing Miles and never has Britten written such beautiful arias as he did for The Governess in The Tower and Letter scenes. The song Malo he wrote for Miles too poignantly illustrates the dilemma Miles/Britten finds himself in when forced to choose.
The drama of this opera is mirrored in the cast. Britten loved Peter Pears/Quint but he also loved Miles/David Hemmings and he loved The Governess/Jennifer Vyvyan. Little importance is given to this remarkable woman in Britten's life but she had a hand in the completion of The Screw. It was at her suggestion that Britten ended the opera with Miles's song Malo. She told me.
How do I know this? In later years I played Flora. Flora is the forgotten character of The Screw but just as important as the other three. She is bisexual if the ghosts are real. Flora is loved by both Quint and Miss Jessel. James in his novella is at pains to point this out. The difference is Flora accepts the situation and gets on with life. Miles was never able to do this and it kills him. Britten admired Flora. The music he gave her to sing is adult and difficult, too difficult for the child. It needs someone special and Britten knew I was special.
The interesting deviation from the plot was in the novella when the great confrontation with Quint comes and The Governess forces Miles to say his name, in the book Miles shouts Peter Quint you devil and then adds the word Where? Britten deliberately left this word out. In fact, in the opera, it could be said that Miles may have chosen The Governess. The Earl of Harewood noticed this too and confronted Britten about it as to whether the ghosts were real. Britten is said to have said One must take a stand! What the stand was we shall never know. Years later as I corresponded with Pears. I like him too, and asked him often Pears would never reply.
Did Britten really love Pears? We shall never know. They had their rough patches in their relationship. When I was at Aldeburgh was one of them. Never once did Britten cast Pears as a lover. When a nice heroic part, like Mr Noye, came up Britten gave it to someone else. The rest are murderers, child molesters, rapists, tyrants and simpletons.
So it is right that Britten is not included in the article even though the omission is possibly accidental. Sadly Britten may never have known heterosexual love. The women he chose and I was one, were all remarkable and unattainable, I was too young and wise. As Lord Harewood told me I was lucky to come out unscathed but Britten was always the perfect English gentleman and years later I married a Miles very like Mr Britten so who knows. The women are there and documented if you look and Pears was a jealous lover and guarded him well. The women, me too, all knew our place in the scheme of things. We were there but out of sight.
We were all exceptional. Believe me, I was exceptional! At the age of 19, I could have danced the lead role in Swan Lake and sung Erwartung. I had already won the Production Prize at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and I disliked Puccini and Brahms! I knew most of Britten's music having attended one of the first performance of Gloriana at Covent Garden in 1953. I also like fast sports cars and Gaudia Bretska. I gave way to Galina Vysnevskya, the Russian Opera star and wife of Rostropovitch the cellist. When Britten visited Russia for Christmas it was not Rostropovitch that Britten went to see.
In The Turn of the Screw Britten says it all about his sexuality if you care to look. I should get a PhD for this!
