When I was a kid growing up in the South of France, there was this children’s TV show called L’Île aux Enfants that my brother and I really loved. The show was about this make-believe island which had a lot of kids and this one dinosaur, kind of like Barney, except he was orange, and his name was Casimir.

Casimir exclusively ate a potion called gloubi- boulga. Nobody knew what was in it. It was just this potion that he made during the show and he would share it with the kids on the island. My brother and I were always so excited to see Casimir make the gloubi- boulga.

My brother and I are really close in age and we played together all the time. We were always creating things. Whether it was a tree house, or cutting fabric to make a costume, that’s what we did as kids. There was this excitement of creating something that didn’t exist, and adding something to the world.

Well, one day when I was around 6 ½ and my brother was 4 ½, we decided we wanted to recreate the gloubi- boulga that Casimir was always making, without my mother knowing it. The idea was that when it was ready we’d be able to eat it and Casimir was going to be there with us.

We started gathering everything we could find from the refrigerator, like yogurt and fruit, and then cleaning products from under the sink. I think we also found some cement from my dad’s workshop and put that in. We added everything and mixed it all together. It looked horrible, like a grayish glob. And it smelled like kitchen products, like bleach.

But then the genius idea, after all of that, was that we stole my mom’s perfume Givenchy III that she had on her nightstand. It was a gift from my dad, this 15ml full-concentration perfume bottle.

I clearly remember my brother and I sitting in the bathroom which was decorated in black tiles. We sat on this fluffy pink bath mat and we were mixing everything together, including pouring the perfume on top. And then suddenly my mother entered the bathroom… she saw the empty perfume bottle and completely freaked out. She was so upset. My dad had gifted her that very expensive perfume and she always wore it with pride. And we destroyed it. We got in a lot of trouble for that and got a good spanking as a result.

That’s what I remember - the smell of that spanking. It’s the vivid memory of the smell of Givenchy III from my mother wearing it, but also, most importantly, because I remember destroying it when I poured the entire bottle onto the gloubi- boulga. My brother and I were sooo proud of ourselves until we weren’t because we were in trouble.

I remember the gloubi- boulga smelling really good, at least for a second, because it smelled like the perfume. And although I had no idea how to interpret the scent at the time, I understand now that it was a very green scent because of the galbanum.

Today that smell makes me feel very fuzzy inside, to tell you the truth. It makes me think of the house I grew up in. It makes me think of my mom, of my brother. It makes me think of that TV show. It makes me think of my childhood. I had a very happy childhood. So, you know, it’s all good memories.

If the scent had a sound, what would it be? A scream. The scream of horror of my mom coming into the bathroom and seeing her children ruining her favorite fragrance that my dad had gifted her.

If the scent had a color, what would it be? A mix of black, pink and green. Because the bathroom was a bathroom from the 70’s and it was entirely black. And we were sitting on the bathroom mat, which was pink, and we were pouring the green fragrance into the glob.

If the scent had a texture, what would it be? Fluffy

If the scent could give you advice, what would it tell you? The scent would tell me to keep mixing, stay inspired, as a general guide to life. This was a mixture. It was more than a creation. It was an insane assembly of things which is the definition of gloubi-boulga. To this day in France if you talk about an insane blend of things that don’t belong together you call it a gloubi-boulga. All the people of my generation understand.