DIARY OF A COUNTRY BEAUTY

With notes of frankincense and fir-tree, cinnamon and clove, these candles capture the scent of the season. By Kathleen Baird-murray

Kathleen Baird-murray chooses the best of this year’s scented candles

They’re restoring the bridge at Ironbridge in Shropshire. And while viewing the work by English Heritage on the 1781 masterpiece is worth a visit in itself, it’s not the reason I go. Ridiculous as it may seem, I’ve been transfixed by the handmade dining candles at Blists Hill Victorian Town since I first visited the open-air museum as a reluctant teenager, so much so that sometimes I’ve paid the admission fee just to make a beeline to the candle factory. Once there, I am mesmerised as the cotton wicks are dipped in pairs time after time, gently adding a thick layer of wax with each descent, and then I’ve bought a dozen or so, wrapped in fake Victorian newspaper. A snip with scissors, and they burn quickly and brightly, sending paraffin-wax smoke up my walls. Possibly not that healthy, but irresistibly Dickensian.

Everyone loves a candle, but no more so than at this time of year. From the bright red dining candles in silver candlesticks my father loved to set the table with at Christmas, to the skinny little ones stuck into a round piece of card dished out in the village church that used to be an incentive for going (sometimes you’d get a satsuma too); there’s something magical, mystical and evocative about candles that sets a scene. It’s a special moment for a not very diligent Catholic, lighting a small votive in memory of a loved one, and I always envied the Jewish tradition of Hanukkah with its menorah and nine ceremonial candles.

Generous friends will sometimes present me with a small Diptyque candle instead of flowers and I’ll hoard it for a rainy day or to jolt myself out of a bad mood, or regift it to someone experiencing the same (it’s OK to regift candles, it’s part of the joy). Can you ever have too many? Fire hazards and turning your sitting-room into a massive altar notwithstanding, I’d say not. If you use a hairdryer to melt any wax residue in the bottom, the pots are easily reused. I plant succulents in my smaller Diptyque holder; one large black pot now sits by the wood-burning stove for fireplace tools and another large white one contains the washing-up brushes by the sink.

Because that’s the other thing about candles – they turn the humdrum into the magnificent. And can there be anything more glamorous than that? Here are some of my favourites, to give or better still – keep for yourself.