Headline Jan 02, 2015/

''' [THY] FRAGRANT MISCONDUCT '''

!WOW!   -and the unworthy I,   -thank you,  all of you, the world over, for your great and kind wishes for the Year. It is just so obvious to me that:

Somewhere,  someone in the whole wide world,  has wished us and me well. One super student, while thanking me, wrote: 

'''!WOW! will remain a gift too good to give away'''  Well........! And here are my predictions: 

2015  - !WOW! will have an odd, fraught relationship with the authorities the world over. We'll be fascinated by their  efforts and  approaches, and invariably disappointed in them as leaders and humans.

They all have lives of such excessive wealth and privilege, that the distance between them and the students will grow obscene, and their contact with common folks generally limited:

To lip service or to the foundations they set up to show how deeply they care about troubled children, Now this way IN: 

OF ALL OUR SENSES,  -smell by far is the most important. So why do take so little care over the scent we give off?

Apart from Lighthouse Keepers, Finnish stunt riders, and those guys who mop the floors-

It is the poets that have the highest suicide rate. And no special wonder.

Think of the lives they lead : the poverty, the impassioned readings to audiences in single figures, the slim volumes that gather dust in stockrooms now that bookshops no longer have poetry sections.

Think of the beards, the polonecks, the carefully crafted letters to magazines that no one will ever read,  the demoralising days spent filling-out applications for funding from small foundations and public bodies.

It is no surprise their  agonisingly wrought masterpieces of self-pity and self-hate are laden with such words as  ''crepuscular''   ''moribund'' and  ''ennui''.  

Think also of our astonishing sense of smell and its ability to evolve   -directly, may viscerally   -memories, moods pictures, strange longings, urgent desires, the very stock-in-trade of the poet.

How much better it does the job. A few succinct  stanzas may conjure up or appropriate some past episode or feeling, but the bards are utterly humiliated in the face of our sense of smell.

No great surprise, then that they are still chucking themselves out of their attic windows by the dozen or putting their last  (borrowed)  50p piece in the gas meter before resting their heads on the rack.

Smell doesn't so much unlock memory as blast its door off. A particular floor polish reminds you of going into assembly at school   -one whiff and you're a nine-year old with ink on your fingers.

All I'm saying is that when it comes to choosing a scent, take as much care with the decision as you would when choosing a suit, a dress, or a friend.

Just because something smells nice on a friend, it doesn't mean it'll smell nice on you.

Always get a sample of scent before you buy it so that you can take it home and wear it and see how it develops. How it smells when you put it on won't be the same as how it smells in an hour or two.

Keep your scents safely out of direct light, preferably in a dark cupboard  -they do deteriorate eventually.

Buy scents with natural rather than synthetic ingredients. Keep a selection of different scents, for one thing it is not good to wear the same one day in, day out -you'll get used to it and longer be able to smell it.

For another, what smells good in the daytime may not smell right in the evening, or when you are in a summer.

Listen to your instinct and trust it. And someone ought to dip in his savings and try Harris's Terre de Bois's  -the London company's first men fragrance. When you put it on, it gives off the fresh smells of verbena juniper and sage.

The lower and warmer notes of vetiver, moss and patchouli are beginning come to the fore, it's almost good enough to write a poem about.

Perfect sentences crumble into dust.

With many wishes and respectful dedication to every student in the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Shift + Adventure '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless