The first instance in winter where a fur coat is to be worn and it still holds the weight of waiting all year in one’s wardrobe, heavy with dust and dress-bags and dry death

I was twelve when my best friend visited New Orleans - this would have been a two day drive in the pale yellow Cadillac (with fin tails to give you a hint of the era). An adventure to the big city. On return she presented me with a tiny bottle that i’d imagined came from a secret backstreet distillery. I locked my bedroom door and sink to the floor unscrewing the top to inhale. Breathing in what smelt sweet and floral and like the future.

Spray starch, dandruff shampoo, Players Real Red, old wools, an ulcer behind their lip, the old jacket with wonky lining from a wet and windy corner of Wales

Turpentine, ‘kind of getting there’ rabbit skin glue, MDF shavings, prawn salad in a plastic tub, machine grease, steel filings, and that dangerously strong, heavy-on-the-solvents & VOCs grey emulsion paint they do the floors with

aged wood, coal, iris, ink, black tea, linen, worn leather. madonna in a fur coat.