"You smell nice, dad."
Daughter Number Two is giving me a compliment. She doesn't even want anything in return.
"How do you know it's not my hairspray?" J says.
"You won't let me have anything, will you," I moan, but Daughter Number Two is on my side. "It's a manly smell," she says. "It must be dad."
She thinks about this a moment. "But I don't mean like BO."
It's good to know that my deodorant is working. [1] I rub my neck to make sure the cologne I sprayed on it a few minutes before is still on my skin. It is. And it does smell nice. L'Eau D'Issey from Issey Miyake. Quite posh stuff. Not cheap. At least I don't think so. It was a present.
I imagine you could chart the development of masculinity over the last 30 or 40 years from the colognes I've sprayed on the back of my neck. Back at the end of the seventies when I finally reckoned it was time to shave the bum fluff off my chin I'd splash Old Spice all over. I must have inherited it from my dad. He'd possibly moved on to Brut on Henry Cooper's advice, or maybe even Hai Karate. [2]
At some point in the eighties I stopped shaving properly and basically opted for a George Michael. My face hid behind the stubble constantly. Did I still use a cologne? Maybe. I can't really remember. If I did it would have been whatever sports scent I'd been given at Christmas. (Did Adidas do bath scents?) J says I used to wear Blue Denim. Was there a scent called Blue Denim? I don't even have any blue denim in my wardrobe.
And then some time in the 1990s I started reading Arena and GQ and realised I should smarten myself up. What happened? I hear you ask. [3] I did my best on the budget I had (not huge). And I started asking for posh scents for Christmas. Acqua di Parma for summer and maybe something muskier for nights out. Say Yves Saint Laurent's M7. Can you still get that?
Here's another question. What makes a good manly smell? Not body odour, as we've already established. My own perfect perfume would be a mixture of freshly shaved wood (my uncle was a carpenter), petrol, leather (which for a vegetarian like me is a bit like Syriza's Yanis Varoufakis admitting he has the hots for Marie Le Pen), coffee, that new book smell and the scent of freshly mown grass. Hmm, that smells like a winner to me. We just need a name. Call it Teddy and dress the bottle up in fake fur.
Tom Ford, can you get on that, please?
FOOTNOTES
[1] Mitchum. I like to think it was named after Robert.
[2] He had a bit of a thing for Valerie Leon in the Hai Karate ads, I reckon.
[3] No-one likes a smartarse, you know.
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