Plain sailing

WHEN they moved into their two-bedroom Victorian townhouse, Lisa and Graham Barnes vowed to restore it to its former glory.

"But with the tiles removed we discovered just how uneven the walls were underneath, and we hadn't budgeted for having the walls replastered."THE scientific world doesn't easily accept the brash oddball. Luca Turin, among his other polymath talents, has a wine-taster's flair for describing a perfume: analytical, evocative and a tad outrageous. Nowhere is his nose better showcased than his description of Fougere Royale. The scent was, according to Turin, a turning point in perfume, the equivalent of "Kandinsky's first abstract gouache of 1910". He savours its separate notes: the herbaceous coumarin, reminiscent of scrubbed tiles, and the "natural civet, stuff that comes from the rear end of an Asian cat".FLOORING"GRAHAM attacked every room in the house simultaneously and it wasn't long before he got to the bathroom," says Lisa, a seamstress. "It was bliss getting rid of the tiles... the old bathroom made me feel miserable every time I stepped into it.To continue the theme, the couple selected a Victorian-style basin and loo to coordinate with the bath, all from Bathstore.com.BY LUCA TURIN (FABER&FABER, GBP12.99)Turin is most enjoyable and enlightening when he relates sensation directly to science, when he tells, for instance, how on a winter's night, amid the low molecular activity of the cold, we sense an olfactory silence. Or, when he notes that what's special about smell is not that it evokes memories all our senses do but the uniqueness of the smell and memory, the precision. "You have to hit the nail smack on the head or you'll miss it by miles. That's why the event is rare and that's why we notice it." For the non- scientist, The Secret Of Scent is occasionally a testing read. Propped up by hazy memories of A-level chemistry and a smattering of medical biochemistry, I only just hobbled through the chemical notations and analysis of how the tunnelling of electrons at the insulated junction between two metallic surfaces might form a mechanism for the vibrational model.Taps pounds 289"Suddenly I understand; " he writes, "we're in a bathroom! The idea here is shit, and what's more someone else's shit - Small wonder Fougere Royale was such a success. At a distance, he who wears it is everyone's favourite son-in-law; up close a bit of an animal." Turin's "adventures in perfume", as he subtitles his book, would make an entertaining enough yarn on their own, tracking his interest from his first purchase of Shiseido's Nombre Noir, a perfume which he says speaks the word "flower" in the "voice of a child older than its years", to setting up fragrance developer Flexitral.Still, Turin has an engaging, anthropomorphic style that drives the reader on, and I was comforted to come across his own "paragraph rule".With the sheer spotty voile curtain for added privacy, the window makes a pretty, central feature.Suite pounds 916A perfume, according to Turin, has three different notes, the top note, which springs off the perfume in the first minute, the heart note, which follows, and the drydown, which lingers for days and weeks. If The Secret Of Scent was a perfume, it would have a top note of sparkling erudition, a heart of rich, extravagant floral romanticism, and a systematic and scientific drydown.ONCE the essential elements were in place, Lisa turned her attention to accessories. "In my job I'm constantly collecting cut- of fs for cushions or seat covers. As soon as I saw the pretty rosebud print from Romo I knew it would be perfect for the blind."Has Turin's theory been accepted? Not quite, though it is being taken seriously enough to be tested by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In many ways, the book is the story of how the scientific world works, of how countless researchers stumble into revelations, yet may never have their ideas accepted or pushed hard enough. One man (Turin) comes along, adds another piece to the jigsaw, has a television programme made about him, and somehow manages to garner all the publicity necessary to make him either the scourge of the establishment or the pioneer of a new orthodoxy.Varnish pounds 18"In almost every science textbook, there is one point, usually of paragraph length, where the style of the author matches exactly one's style of understanding." The Secret Of Scent in fact has many such paragraphs. It is also powered by a sense of discovery, unfolding a little like a detective novel, so that when it is revealed that borane and hydrogen sulphide have a very different shape, yet smell the same and vibrate similarly, it is like a finger pointing directly at the murderer.I am not a perfume person. Possibly the only fragrance I have ever owned was a bottle of Turin's bete noire, Poison, as a teenager. The Secret Of Scent, however, made me want to loiter around a perfume counter, take a long draw of Diorrissimo and seek out the "hyper-realism" of its lily of the valley. I was seduced.Fabric pounds 75CHOOSING a bathroom suite was easy, says Lisa. "I've always loved the idea of a roll-top bath and, although they take up a little more space, I was determined to fit one in!"ROLL-TOP BATHWHAT IT COSTWall panels pounds 100Paint pounds 65But the couple, of Guildford, Surrey, are both happy with it now. Painted in white and a pale blue emulsion, it provides a subtle contrast to the white bathroom suite while creating the illusion of extra height.

TOTAL pounds 1,553

Author: Zena Alli