Do you have a secret dream of something you’ve wanted to do for years? Something you’ve put in your too-wild, too-stupid basket? Something, nevertheless, you keep finding on the floor, away from its basket?

I’ve got several, and today I’m finally going to make one of them happen. Because today I’m booking a flight to Paris in May and putting together the itinerary of a Grand Perfume Tour I’ve dreamt of taking for years.

I’m a perfume nut from way back, and not just the stuff that comes in bottles. All smells: flowers, sand, laundry, earth, river water, body odour (yes, really). In fact, I’m with Jean-Claude Ellena, founder of the Parisian perfumery, The Different Company, when he says perfume can be “too perfumey.” *

These days I’m less interested in wearing perfume than I am in sampling and learning about it. Especially the so-called “niche” stuff. The stuff that smells dirty and grungy and lascivious and complex and unsettling, and most of all, uncompromising.

Some of these niche perfumes are actually made by niche perfumers: very small, artisan makers. Some are kind of accidentally niche: made by larger, more mainstream perfumers, yet still smelling niche.

And it’s niche, plus probably a few old faves, I’ll be pursuing in France and thereabouts in May.

So I’m thinking something like the following:

• 3-4 weeks in total
• few days to start with in London
• my old friend, Eurostar, to Gare du Nord
• a certain “traditionnel” hotel in the 16th arondissement
• 2 or 3 visits to Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido to roll in the creations of the perfumer closest to my intellectual sensibilities, Serge Lutens, who said of his latest perfume, L’Eau Serge Lutens, L’Anti-Parfum, “This creation is my response to a world that is overscented … I might even say ‘embalmed’” ·
• a trip to the aforementioned Jean-Claude Ellena and his daughter, Céline, at The Different Company in the Marais
• Comme des Garcons
• Miller et Bertaux
• a train to Versailles to visit the Osmothèque Museum, the perfume conservatory
• another train to Grasse in the south of France, the perfume capital of the world, to visit the International Museum of Perfume and some of the old-time, classical perfumers like Molinard, Fragonard and Galimard
• a few more days in the south of France visiting all the beauty spots
• back to London and then, time permitting, a quick trip to County Clare in Ireland, country of my ancestors, to visit The Burren Perfumery (thanks, Loretta)
• and then back, via Dubai, to Australia.

I’ve also got this idea that I’d like to select 10-12 of these niche perfumes to import and sell in Australia, that land barren of great perfume. The land where it’s either Allure from Myer, or sidling up to the fantastically disobliging staff in the paltry two or three “speciality” perfume shops to beg for a spray. And by “speciality” here we’re talking Creed or Kingdom, not Sous le Vent or something from the Histoires de Parfum line.

So, that’s something else I’m thinking of doing on the trip: choosing and arranging to import a hand-picked dozen – the crème de la crème of niche and niche-smelling – for the poor, deprived women of Australia.

And if I could pick up, for my own delectation, some Feminitè du Bois in the original, pinky-plum bottle, and track down the mysterious Guet Apens by Guerlain, I’d be really rather pleased with my trip.

*****

It must be said that I have no idea how I’m going to pay for this trip, or how I’m going to do it in general. Yet, just as I decided to give up the word “why” earlier this year, and — a couple of weeks ago — the word “but”,  I’m now giving up the word “how” as well.

Paris, France, here I come.

*****

* As quoted by Elena Vosnaki in her great perfume blog, Perfume Shrine.