KERRE MCIVOR

KERRE SNIFFS OUT A FUN ACTIVITY TO DO WITH HER GIRLFRIENDS

Everyone needs a friend like my friend Di. I love all my friends, of course – they share the common denominators of being warm, generous, clever and very, very funny, but each of them has a characteristic that makes them unique. Di’s is that she’s a doer. As with most self-made men and women, she gets things done.

I’ve known her for nearly 30 years and there’s not a lot we don’t know about each other. We didn’t see as much of each other as we would have liked to when I lived in Auckland and she lived in Wellington, but the catch-ups were worth the long waits in between. And then she found love and moved north.

It also meant that when a group of us sat around and talked about how nice it would be to do something, we suddenly found ourselves doing it. Without Di, we tend to just talk about visiting an art gallery, seeing a movie or having a madcap weekend away somewhere. With Di, no sooner has the thought been expressed than she’s out with her phone, navigating her way through websites and booking us all on flights before you can say, “The cabin doors are about to close. Please make sure all seatbelts are fastened.”

Thanks to Di, I’ve climbed the

Auckland Harbour Bridge and I’ve travelled to Sydney to see the stage show of Muriel’sWedding. I’ve been to sculpture exhibitions and I’ve cycled the Otago Rail Trail – truly one of the most memorable weeks of my life. And now, thanks to Di, I’ve learnt the intricacies of perfume-making.

Last week, she rounded up me and another friend, Clare, and gave us a time and date to meet at the ferry terminal. On a glorious summer’s day, we three travelled over to Devonport on the ferry and arrived at a candle store/perfumerie right across the road from the ferry terminal. Our lovely hostess Treena explained what we had to do and then for the next couple of hours, we sniffed, mixed, sniffed and measured and sniffed again.

Treena has studied candle-making and professional perfumery, and goes most years to France to further her knowledge and keep up to date with latest trends. She knows her stuff – or rather, Treena ‘nose’ her stuff.

I have a newfound appreciation for the makers of my favourite perfume and I shall never begrudge them a cent of what I pay again. It’s a highly complex art form. There are so many different scents and when they’re combined, a drop here and a drop there can completely transform your fragrance. They’re arranged into families of smells to try to make it simpler for us amateur perfumiers, but it was still a complicated process. And it really is a combination of art and science – knowing just how much you need to get the notes within the perfume that you want and knowing when the balance is just right.

We all approached Treena holding up our testing papers like children showing their handprint paintings to their parents and she tried to guide us gently in the direction she thought we might be heading. In the end, the three of us produced our very own unique fragrances in our very own bottles, with the name of the fragrance and our names written on a label stuck to the side.

I named mine after my beautiful wee granddaughter. But I don’t think I’ll be taking Theodora by Kerre to the market any time soon. What began as a playful floral flirtation of the olfactory organs ended in a slightly astringent, citrus-y tang. Like a room freshener. A high-end room freshener, but a room freshener nonetheless. I’ll leave perfume-making to the experts, but it was a fun way for us to spend a couple of hours learning something new and enjoying one another’s company. I can’t wait to see where Di takes us next!