The curse of smell
Because indeed it can be a curse at times – what a thing for an aromatherapist to say – but I have just spent the last few days seeing how long I can hold my breath as I scoot from one place to the next. Hey yes – you guessed, I am back in Dudley. The smell hits me as soon as I get off the train – a mix of fried food and curry. Not that bad but not welcoming either.
This time however I was staying at a different hotel – a most obvious downgrade from my usual one. I missed the front door (obviously never heard of Feng Shui) and so my first introduction to the place was a strong smell of stale beer as I made my way via the pub part of the hotel, then a cloying, deep fried food smell as I trotted through the restaurant and finally cheap fake room fragrance as I staggered into the reception. Then down a labyrinth of shabby halls to find my room. One hall stunk of old cigarette smoke but the rest had varying degrees of nasty room fragrance, chemically and over powering – yet not quite over powering enough to disguise the underlying, all pervasive smell of fried oil.
By the time I got to my room I was feeling a little ill and most certainly was not looking forward to staying here. But stay I did. Three nights. Never got used to the smell. No matter what I ordered it was tainted with that oily smell too – it got into everything. So there – it can be a bit of curse if you have a sensitive snout. I am sure I reek too now – I leave this evening and imagine as I hit London that people will eye me up and think, yep she’s just come from Dudley…. give me my wood smoke and mountain air….
Tescoing it
Feels like I have barely got back to Italy and soon gearing up to do one last stint in Dudley’s mega Tesco! Of course it is the time of the year when people are stuffing the aisles filled with baubles and wrapping paper, the iPad 2 are drawing a constant crowd but all is quite quiet on the healthcare front – you can just imagine they are leaving health for a New Year’s resolution…. Interesting too to see how many mums and dads just ask for Calpol – the quick easy solution – none of this mucking about with jars and gels and massage – anything too natural may take a little bit of effort and – hey – why bother when there is an alternative that will knock the kid out – job done!
Hmmm – I see – no talking some of them around – no point even trying I would say. If that is the attitude they simply are not the customers we are looking for. Still it makes you wonder, did they not read how over use of Calpol is being (possibly) blamed for the rise in asthma in kids – just getting paracetemol down their throats at the slightest squeal surely is not very responsible parenting….
Having said that the Aromagel gel for sleep is selling like hot cakes – not for kids so much but for the adults themselves!! Small moment of fame when I managed to get a bit of local media coverage in the Express & Star
Having had my moan I will see however that there are also plenty of people who are keen to learn of new and natural ways to help their little ones grown into healthy adults
The Dudley experience
So of course – all those great intentions of keeping this up to date went by the wayside but all for a worthy cause – much focus has been on introducing the Aromagels to the good people of Dudley!
I have to say that as far as Tesco goes this is without doubt the – well poshest – one I have been to. More department store than supermarket with hairdressing salons in the centre a place to go have your nails done and your eyebrows ‘threaded’ and of course somewhere to go and find out about combining reflexology with aromatherapy for babies and children.
Having said that the greatest bulk of my customers are adults who are keen to find out about Stars aromagel and how this can help them with their insomnia – seems to be SO much insomnia going on around Dudley – personally I sleep like an absolute log each time I get back to the Village Hotel – well so long as my room isn’t above the bar as it was last night. Had to move all my stuff and traipse around in my pyjamas to a quieter end of the hotel sometime around midnight last night!
Anyway – back to these Clinics – the very exciting news is that the new Tesco opening next Easter in Prague have ‘spotted’ SLP and asked us to stock the store with our ‘ungents’ and oils – and also run some clinics out there – so am swatting up on my Czech as we speak!!
Dudley on our map
Suddenly all focus is on Dudley – we can talk about it now – I think it was quite hush hush up until a few weeks ago or maybe I just imagined that, but now we are steaming ahead and talking about the exciting project we are working on with Tesco. They are trialing a new model of retailing – I believe this is the correct description, with a whole new clinic dedicated to natural therapies. We will be running a Sleep Clinic with all our expertise and products and a Mother and Baby clinic, again with our aromagels. It sort of came out of the blue and we were invited about 6 weeks ago to show ‘our wares’ – I didn’t really think that much about it and now we have committed to running 4 days a month at the new store – will keep you all posted!!
Christmas is here!
Ha! Just kidding, but it got your attention now didn’t it! Actually I was rather shocked when I walked through Selfridges a couple for weeks ago – yes, that’s right it was still August… and they had an entire room dedicated to Christmas decorations! It was but a few days later that I got a rather large order for my Christmas Spirit – our signature Christmas blend, and as I had none left I set to blending some more. There I was in shorts and T shirt, 36 degrees up here in the Tuscan hills, looking at over the bright blue sky and rolling green hills, mixing frankincense and bay with sweet orange and carefully adding in all the other lovely ingredients that make up one of my all time favourite blends. When I went back down I gave everyone a good sniff and they closed their eyes and went aaahhh Christmas. You see you don’t need sleigh bells and frosty landscapes to revitalise Christmas, it is all in the smell!!
Up in arms
I am hoping that I can slip – quietly and elegantly – back into blogging here. The fact of the matter is that I have been blogging for others which has in fact taken up a fair portion of my time. When I last blogged here – we had not finished our house and now here I am blogging from our beautiful Tuscan pad – still quite unfinished it must be said but hey ho – we are in! We have added to the family too – no, no more kids – phew – but a menagerie of pets, another dog, a cat and 2 terrapins to be precise. We also have several mice but they were uninvited and are the reason for getting Claude – the cat. On the essential oil front we have added aromagels to the range, have focused on ‘sleep’ as a key topic and are planning some rather exciting roll outs with Tesco which kicks off in a couple of months time – very very exciting even if it does mean I will be swapping Tuscany for Dudley several days a month! So just because I have not been updating this blog does not mean I have been sitting idle as you can see. I will be back regularly I promise – if indeed there is anyone out there still hoping to read this!! I, like so many others, would like to add my ‘arms in the air’ over the controversial book Maggie goes on a diet although it is of course a topic which surrounds all of us all of the time and younger and younger ears and eyes are being assailed with ‘fat blasting’ messages. Haven’t read the book so reserve judgement, maybe, just maybe it will put things into a healthy context – one thing is for sure of course, it is getting great advance publicity – well lot’s of it at any rate!!!
So what are you saving for?
We recently were having a family debate about what we were all saving for – it started with Lloyd and I mentioning the fact that we should save harder so we can finish our Italian house project. Child numero uno (15) says he is saving for a trip to Spain this Summer, child numero due (12) said he was saving for a house but that many other temptations got in the way, such as his desire for an iTouch, a drumset and a quad bike – I can relate to that, so many things get in the way of my saving but actually now that we are truly focused on the house I have to say that nothing else gets in the way – supermarket shops are even quite sparse these days (yes, I know we had fish fingers last night, so??) and child numero tre (9) calmly explained that she is not saving as it is her birthday in May (so we had all better get saving I guess is what she meant!!) Seriously, however, I truly think it is a great exercise to get the kids really focusing on something they want to save for. I have seen it in the past, Sam has saved really hard, gone into the shop to make his purchase, and then decided not to buy it after all, it took so much hard work to raise the funds, the object of his desire suddenly does not seem worth it any longer – I of course secretly smile and think – yes lesson learnt! Focusing, really focusing on what you want to achieve can make working for it all the more worthwhile and this is a lesson even little kids can learn. It should not be seen so much as a hardship but rather working towards a reward but of course goals have to be realistic. When George was 4 I offered him a treat if he would give up his dummy (much loved and needed). He thought for a while and then said he would stop if I bought him a motorbike – we duly went to Woolworths (yes it was some time ago of course!) and inspected the motorbikes, no, he said, I meant a real motor bike…. needless to say he still has that dummy (thankfully he does not use it anymore!!)
The wonderful taste and smell of yellow
It is that time of the year when I personally am yearning for Spring to hurry up and – erm spring in. It is cold, grey, damp and frankly quite uninspiring. Where we live we do at least have the ski slopes to go and have a frolick in and that makes winter a little more bearable. I am however getting close to fed up with crackling log fires and want some daffodils to start making an appearance! So I was quite jollied along when I read of about a resourceful chap in New Zealand who, for an advertising stint, had to develop a yellow chocolate bar – he wanted to create the taste of yellow – yep daffodil yellow – he choose bananas and pineapples as the key yellow flavours and produced the world’s first yellow chocolate bar – if you don’t believe me go and have a look for yourselves – http://www.campaignbrief.com/2010/02/yellow-chocolate-hits-nz-shelv.html – and that reminded me of a workshop I had run some time ago when the kids were defining certain fragrances by colours – yellow of course was represented by tangy lemons and of course citrus is the smell we need right now to bring some zest back into our lives – whilst we wait for the real thing to happen (Spring that is!) So I have been sprinkling lemon oil blended with a little bergamot and it has worked wonders. The kids in particular noted that their rooms had been tidied (they hadn’t at all but they just felt good!) and I have used it in the car, in the candles and on all the radiators – and truly there is a yellow glow going on that just gives us a bit of a much needed lift – It sometimes takes me by surprise too – I use essential oils almost every day in one way or another and sometimes I forget how wonderful they can make a day feel, it is so simple really and so effective!
The smell of fear
We are off to the dentist – booked and in the diary – and my little 9 year old is counting down the seconds to her – as she coins it – moment of terror. She is absolutely petrified. The very thought sends shivers down her spine. She wakes and says ‘only 2 more sleeps’, she eats dinner and says ‘only 5 more meals’ and she fixes on the day after ‘the big event’ and wishes herself in that spot – on the other side of the moment of terror! So we have discussed the rationals behind such a fear, what to do to make her feel calmer about the visit and so on. We have whittled it down to smell. She says if she could go in and not be hit with the immediate dentist smell she would feel much better. We got there via a circuitous route too. She started off saying if the dentist did it outside, even the car park would be fine. Was it the lights she didn’t like, she thinks about this – no, bright lights are ok, colour scheme fine, comfy chair, gentle music…. all ok – and then she said the overwhelming fear came when she smelt the dentist smell. We talked about this same smell in hospitals and doctors surgeries, that same panic-button smell that immediately puts you on edge, that makes you feel uneasy, that gives you unpleasant butterflies. So let’s change the smell – let’s go in on a cloud of tangy lemon or sweet orange blossom. Let’s spray geranium and frankincense around the rooms and down the corridors. It will not be sufficient to take our own bottle of What If and keep it glued to a nostril, this requires major overhaul, the entire atmosphere needs to be imbued with wonderful scented oils. Everyone, including the poor dentist would feel far far better and it could just make the difference between kids picking one dentist over another, one doctor over another….. I want to create a blend that lures people in like roasted coffee beans and freshly baked bread can do. So Holly and I are going to blend our very own ‘dentist scent’ and take it with us next week – we will let you know how we get on!!!
8 hours on the shop floor!
Last week I spent two days in Boots – High Street Kensington branch – ‘selling my wares’ as it were! I had a couple of large banners announcing Aromatherapy for Children and my range of 6 blends displayed on a table. And I stood there, and stood there. A number of key things became rapidly apparent, namely that I should have called up all my friends and asked them to pop by at different points of the day just to prop me up and give me some gossip to sustain me. But actually i really enjoyed it as it meant I got to properly interact with people who had never considered the concept of using essential oils neat for kids to inhale. And because I was in Boots they appreciated the fact that I was not selling snake oil but rather something which had been through some stringent research (and believe me it had been!!) The American’s were the best, I had one lovely man buy 12 packs and he didn’t even have kids!! He bought them as gifts for people who do – what a nice person!! And then there were a couple of American ladies who said they would email Oprah when they return as I should be on her show! Key was that I came away with a nice warm glow that people really did like the product. I spent a considerable amount of time between customers, daubing Focus on tissues for the staff who all said they needed something to revive them and indeed so did I . Cafe Nero’s coffee simply didn’t hit the sides! I take my hat off to all shop staff around the globe – you are not appreciated enough – and in particular to the Boots staff who truly do offer legendary service to their customers. There was one shop manageress however who ticked me off for leafing through the in-house magazine to check where my editorial was – she was not in my favourites list!! So now back to the designing of new products – one should always get out there every now and then – it re-energises the creative juices!!
