We spent a year living by the river, in a universe of green. The first morning, I was up at dawn, standing barefoot-cold in long grass, stunned by the cacophony of spring birds, and clouds of rooks who made a mockery of the quiet of the countryside.

With a formal procession of three cats behind me, I crossed the bridge onto the island to explore the surreal world of shoulder-high cow parsley and giant gunnera, startled by the insistent grunting of swans and the see-saw screech of escaped pet peacocks.

It was a still summer, though. I had to learn to live among small details, closed away while bones and flesh and metal meshed in painfully slow motion. There were weeks of just watching the light cross my bedroom ceiling, knowing that this world was thriving and alive outside. I could hear the low of cows grazing in the churchyard, tractors trundling by, and along the river, beyond the high hedges as fields turned from green to gold, the whirr and churn and shouts of the earliest harvests. Emerging, wobbling on crutches, everything slowed down. I couldn’t go further than the island for months. This was my year of pinhole photography: hour-long exposures with self-portraits, living intensely in my body, acutely aware of the tiniest movements, the smallest sounds, of the shape of light, and the drift of scents.

St Clair Scents’ First Cut is as beautiful and alive as the changing light of my river island, with the finely drawn details and captured time of pinhole photography. The scents are precise and delicately drawn, but it’s so quiet. There’s a vivid fully-realised world here where you can feel the weight of the earth rising to meet your feet, the susurration of bees in clover, the satisfied ache of work. I want to immerse myself fully in this, but it’s like holding on to the details of a dream as you wake, the intricate plot dissolving in the logic of daylight. It’s worth the concentration, the deep focus, holding still to hear the whispers, but oh, how I wish I could turn up the volume to meet the joyful noise of that spring morning.

(Thank you Diane for the sample)