Today, I had planned a luxurious girlie day all to myself, which is being topped off with dinner at my sister’s house so no need to cook, clean or anything else boring. To get myself in the mood, I had a steamy shower and slathered myself in lavender products.
I adore lavender. It looks so pretty and smells incredible – fresh, feminine, floral and clean. Most of all it reminds me of my grandmother, who was one of my closest friends and strongest inspirations in life. A truly remarkable woman, I treasured every moment with her and although this month will mark four years since she passed, I still have to stop myself from instinctively calling her up from time to time, forgetting she is no longer around. The scent of lavender evokes strong and happy memories of grandma – she was never without a bottle of lavender “toilet water” and used to dab lavender oil onto cotton handkerchiefs which she would inhale or let flutter around to let the scent permeate the air. I was intoxicated and addicted to the scent even before grandma dies and my usage became a way of keeping her memory close to me. Funnily enough, she once told me that the reason she herself was such a lavender-addict (lavendict?) was due to the influence of her own step-mother. Grandma’s birth mother had died whilst she was still very young and her father remarried after a time, shortly producing a younger sister. Grandma was unsure of how to take to the new mother (and she was “mother” – it was forbidden to refer to her as step-mother or allude to the fact that there had been a previous wife) and family arrangement until one day her mother took her shopping – just the two of them as a kind of bonding experience. Grandma had not been around many women up until then, and those she did now were calloused old fishwives) so she was amazed be her new mother’s clothes, jewellery and beauty regime. Particularly her habit of sprinkling lavender oil onto a clean white handkerchief. During the shopping trip, she asked why she did this and her mother replied that no matter what troubles surround you, a breath of lavender would always reassure her of the beauty in the world. She then purchased for grandma as a gift, her own bottle of lavender oil and new handkerchiefs and impressed on her that she was not a child but a young woman. From then on, not only were they firm friends with a good mother/daughter relationship but grandma kept the lavender tradition ongoing every day of her life.
Now I have inherited this family trait. Well, not quite – I don’t do the hanky thing (not yet anyway) but I use a lavender perfume as my everyday perfume (evenings and occasions are scented with Marc Jacob’s Daisy) and have dried sprigs of the flower perfuming my drawers and wardrobe. S understand the emotional ties but can’t quite get his head around the fact that it is a scent from grannies and keeps telling me how I am too young to wear it just yet. He draws the line at my plan to hang sprigs from doorknobs but has conceded that when we eventually move and have a garden, I can have a lavender bed – which I look forward to being populated by busy bees and butterflies! I also plan to try cooking with the flower this summer - inspired mainly by Mat Follas' Masterchef winning white chocolate and lavender mousse.
Luckily, such is the current trend for pretty china teacups, floral dresses and chintz, lavender toiletries are becoming more and more common on the high street so I was surprised and delighted to receive from S this past Christmas a gorgeous package of Arran Aromatics lavender products. I have been keeping them for a day like today and since the sun is shining and it truly feels like spring is underway, I have enjoyed pampering my body and mind with these wonderful products.
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