I have become addicted to incense. Why? Dank dog after wet walk is a scent I’m not keen to savour. I hate to admit it but Teddy does (sometimes, only sometimes) smell. Yes, I can bath him, but it was the dread of a lingering dogginess in the air that drove me to seek out something stronger than a scented candle (to combat wet fur, something with more welly is required). Enter Mariage Freres, the smart French tea-house founded in 1854. It not only offers some of the finest cakes and teas in Paris, served by stylish waiters wearing the crispest white aprons, but it sells nine different types of tea-inspired incense. I’m slowly working my way through the highly scented little sticks. My current favourite is “a soft garden fragrance”, The Apres L’Orage. What’s more, while some reports say a dog’s sense of smell is one hundred times better than ours, and others say it’s one million time better, Teddy is not averse. He does not leave the room at first sniff of the heady fragrance but likes to linger wherever it burns. He’s discovering his inner hippy. How very convenient.
