Holy Kaboly! What is the name of that Cologne?

It was a hot day so I decided to spend the day window shopping and enjoying the Westfield Shopping Centre’s air con rather than rack up my own electricity bill.

I messaged a couple of girlfriends to meet at The Coffee Club for lunch. We positioned ourselves facing the hustle and bustle of the shopping centre while we perved, wait, did I say perved? I meant observed shoppers. My friends and I sat guessing shoppers careers, watching shoppers argue, shoppers chasing their kids, shoppers on a tinder date and learnt different technique of how to dodge sales people located smack bang in the middle of the aisles.

There we were pretending to live perfect lives, taking photos using filters that made us look 10 kilos lighter with hashtags galore.

Then it hit! We put our phones down and our nostrils flared open as we searched for the person wearing a cologne that could stop a comet. It wasn’t Brut (some people still rock it), Huey (Hugo Boss), Dior Sauvage or Paco Rabanne 1 Million Cologne. It definitely wasn’t Lynx Africa, the scent that changed the way we looked at the boys back in high school.

We were determined to find the person that stopped us from eating our eggs benny. We eyeballed and subtly smelt every person in The Coffee Club and followed our nose. We found him.

Hiding in the corner, reading the newspaper was the culprit. His hands shaking as he tried to adjust his reading glasses, wearing socks and open sandals with his walking aid parked beside him. I made my way to him and complimented him on his choice of cologne.

Is that you smelling nice? what cologne is that?

He responded ‘oh yes dear, thank you’. ‘It’s a blue bottle or maybe it was a black bottle, no a green bottle, no wait, a dark red bottle, shaped like a tower with a picture of a star, was is a star? maybe it was a triangle or was it a letter?. I don’t know where I got it from, Myer, David Jones, Coles or that perfume place in the middle of the aisle.’

I smiled and slowly backed away and told my friends i had no luck finding out what it was. We sat in silence and didn’t know what to do. Did we just fall in love with an elderly man because of the scent of his cologne?

We changed our mind and decided the cologne wasn’t that great. It had a crappy after smell and wasn’t worth purchasing. We came to the conclusion that we were all hungry and our senses were playing tricks on us.

We ended our social gathering and told each other that we needed to do a little extra shopping. I pretended to walk towards Target but then quickly turned and power walked to the fragrance section in Myers. As I walked passed the perfume section I halted. A couple of minutes ago we were friends having eggs benny and now we were in a standoff. There we all were trying to find a blue, black, green, dark red bottle in the shape of a tower with a star, triangle or letter on it.

Oh God, I hope it wasn’t Old Spice that had just been updated!

Penelope Peepaw