Season's Greetings Basenoters!

A floor down from where we sleep, a Santa is caught in the act of stocking delivery by a grown up child. A cry of alarm cuts through the quiet of a soft Christmas night, contrasting with the snow-dampened quiet outside. Just for tonight though, an old bearded man at the end of the bed is not sinister but merely an attempt by a father to retain a little sparkle and dance in the air around his children, despite their progress to reason a decade or two ago.

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Elsewhere, the perfume elves have been placing parcels beneath branches. The magic will be suspended in air tomorrow too. A long journey ends here: from lab or atelier, from test tube or petal, the final destination is inside glass, wrapped in paper, under tree.

Perfume lovers have read blogs, found websites, ordered niche delights. Others have scrambled through Tescos sniffing testers yesterday, choosing something more for mum or dad. Sometime after lunch, across the land, small clouds of fragrant liquid will be pumped from tiny nozels towards wrists or to hang briefly amongst air before sinking and drying down. The focused location of the carefully gathered aromatic molecules disturbed in an instant as they are expelled from the safety of glass out into the chaos around. They will gather heat and disperse, some detected for human pleasure, many not achieving the journey to nose. Sighs and smiles will ensue and hopefully, a merry, fragrant Christmas will be had by all.