101 Things #31 - Sweet Smell of Success

A bucket list should be ambitious. It should pose a challenge. Some effort, physical, mental or financial should be involved for one to achieve that state of satisfaction that comes with, well, that comes with, erm, bear with me, that comes with achievement. [Note to Ed. Can we find a better ending for this sentence, please?]

It is not the same when you are compiling the definitive list of things you do not want to do and will not do, the list I call 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die. Manifestly some of the items on the list are not really things I could do even if I wanted to. But that is not the point. Who knows what may happen in the future? Let me today focus on one of these, probably unattainable anyway, feats that I will not let happen even if they could. I will not, as recommended by Science of People.com, ¹

Create my own perfume range.

In some ways this one is easier than you may think. If you watched The Apprentice (UK version) in 2014 you will have seen the candidates tasked with making fragrances in programme 3, and all they did was faff about smelling from various test tubes and then mixing them up until they had something that seemed reasonable. So that's the technical side out the way. Of course the most important effort has be put into marketing. Once perfume ranges were made by perfumers, people who knew about making perfume. Now they are made, or at least marketed, by people who simply happen to be well known. Female pop singers. Film actors. Retired footballers. Anyone can do it. Have some talented people design the packaging, fill up the bottles with the stuff you've made earlier and you're good to go.

 Now for the key part - the name. We have Opium from Yves Saint Laurent and Poison from Dior, I give you:-

Pure Strychnine from Ramblings of Ruislip (est. 2019).

 It's easy to imagine the voice-over as the camera pans over a young lady walking silkily past a throng of gawping male admirers in dinner jackets, possibly in a fashionable night club².

"They'll be choking at your feet. They'll be writhing in pure agony. You'll take all their breath away, quite literally, when you use Pure Strychnine"

You see what I did there? Out of nothing I have fabricated an utterly convincing new perfume based on nothing more than a concept for an ad - just like every other perfume launched by celebrities. This is why I have utter disdain for the industry and this is why I refuse to have anything more to to do with it.

Special note to perfume makers 
If you think my Pure Strychnine concept is pretty damn amazing then, look, don't worry too much about the harsh words above, it's just a blog, OK? Get in touch and let's see if we can sort out a quick licensing deal.

Footnote:
1. In fairness, this website merely proposes that you should make your own perfume. But where's the fun in that? It's the choosing of the name and the packaging and the ad campaign, that's what it's all about, surely?
2. They do still wear formal evening dress in fashionable night clubs, don't they? I know standards are slipping everywhere but still ....