Senyoko Paris Migration de l’arbre is beautiful. Euan McCall has crafted an aromatic green scent as poignant and vividly moving as the fairytale that inspired it. As with his Jorum Studio perfumes, there’s a delicate mastery of materials here that tells stories about time, change, and place. And this one is taking root under my skin, haunting me.

See, if you ask me where I’m from, I can’t answer. My family always moved. I’d go away for school and come back to a different address. I never lived where I was born, and kept moving. Until last year I’d never stayed four years in one building. The place I call home has always been temporary, unstable, made anew with each box unpacked.

When we moved to Suffolk, I thought home might become permanent. Life, of course, had other plans, but, for a little while, I revelled in the idea that I owned trees. Trees that I could get to know. Year by year, season by season, I could watch the changing leaves and blossom and fruit and the slow magic of branches growing, roots extending, and birds nesting in my orchard.

One tree was the tallest in the village and was a landmark for the rooks. These baggy-trousered corvids were invariably strutting about, jabbing into flowerbeds for snacks, sitting on the flint wall and mocking the cats. But once a day thousands would fly over our garden, circling that tree on their way to their evening roosts. It was magical, with an overwhelming sound of beating wings as clouds of cawing, chattering, murmuring birds headed to their rookery. Some would play –chasing, tumbling through the air, looping around and around– or pause on the ridge of the roof to socialise.

My tree was part of their map, their routine, and their way home.

We had to leave, but when you live in an old house you know you are only a footnote in its story. The trees would keep growing, the apples would keep ripening, and the rooks would still fill the sky even if we were not there to see it.

But the people who bought the house didn’t like the way this tree towered over everything. They didn’t like the sticky buds, the falling pollen, the tangle of roots rising through the grass and bluebells, or the drifts of fallen leaves. And they didn’t like the rooks. They cut down the tree within a year. Bastards.

(This bottle was loaned to me by @everdandysilverfox thank you!)

Originally posted 26 September 2019