This is a photo of my mum on her wedding day with her parents and bridesmaids. My grandfather died of lung cancer due to passive smoking on the boat he worked on. One bridesmaid has beaten cancer and the other is currently fighting it.

Here's the group shot from when my parents were married. Everyone with a 'C' on the face has had or died from cancer.

This photo doesn't include even half of my family. Even more have had cancer. 

So when my mum told me she was organising a fundraising event for Cancer Research UK, there was no question about my getting involved. She and two other 'fumeheads' have been working tirelessly throughout this month to get it organised at Café Florentine on Northfields in Ealing. 

One of those fumeheads was perfumista Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays (the number of Tuesdays you have if you live til you're 80, if you were curious) who ran the perfume workshop. We smelt a wide range of her niche perfumes as well as a few of the core ingredients found in perfumes. For instance, hedione (that's methyl dihydrojasmonate for the scientists) is added to floral perfumes to make the flowers' scents really stand out. 

My favourite part of the evening was when we were testing our senses, which you can try at home. Sarah handed out jellybeans and had us all pinch our noses before chewing them. We had to work out what flavour we had and the second we released our noses, we were hit with a boom of flavour, proving your nose is incredibly linked to taste. 

Guest left with goodie bags filled with L'Occitane samples we were given in Leicester when I went to see Ólafur Arnalds. The event raised over £500 for Cancer Research UK and Sarah will be making a unique fragrance called 'A Midsummer Night's Breeze' with proceeds going to Cancer Research! 

I'll post links to press stuff later and my next post will be the playlist I built for the evening.