Scent

Miller Harris perfume (the one in the picture is not the one I wear)

Wedding dress made out of toilet paper

This is the winner of a contest for the best wedding dress made out of toilet paper.* I have no idea whether the dress as going to be worn on the actual Big Day (what if it rains? was the sensible point made by English recipients of the email in which I received it.)

I think this toilet paper wedding dress thing comes from American bridal showers. Still, I find something touchingly heroic in the enormous amount of time, patience, ingenuity and imagination given by the contestants to this pointless but almost poetic task, like the baffling hobby, popular in England in the 1950s, of building models of Salisbury cathedral out of used matches.

* with thanks to Susan Paley who sent it to me

Thought for the day

Think of dress in every light
'Tis woman's chiefest duty:
Neglecting that, ourselves we slight
And undervalue beauty.
That allures the lover's eye,
And graces every action;
Besides, when not a creature's by,
'Tis inward satisfaction.
John Gay 1685-1732