The importance of smelling your friends
A love letter to a long-time bestie - and the joy of IRL
Walking around Rome together earlier this week, I got a big waft of my friend Edwina’s perfume, and it punched my heart. We chat on text a lot, we check in with each other, and these days I have Instagram chats with her 18-year-old daughter, my birthday twin Lucia. But she lives in Sydney, I’m in London, so we don’t get to hang much.
Edwina has worn the same Issy Miyake scent for as long as I’ve known her and I’ve known her since 1992. It’s such a delicious smell that I copied it for a time, but isn’t it funny how some perfumes just really belong to someone else? I didn’t enjoy it on me as much as I still do on her.
It was there when I first met her, when she was working in a pub and sharing a room with Shelly, my best friend from university, in London’s Fleet Street. I was across town doing the same thing in a tired old pub called The Duke of Norfolk, in Notting Hill. It’s not there anymore, this trendy place is. Shelly told me I’d love Edwina. Shelly knows me all too well.
Edwina is smart, kind and - my number one priority - has a filthy sense of humour. She’s of posher Aussie stock than me and it shows. A superbly talented interior designer, she’s always had a taste for the finer things. She’s an excellent cook and chic as hell. She has an Aussie accent, yes, but it has more refinement than our standard-issue nasal twang. If you’re ever wondering, Who are these bastards who manage to get the table at that restaurant that has a six month waiting list?, it’s her. Edwina is that bastard, which often works out well for me, as it did in Rome this week.
The last time we got to see each other was in October 2021, so when I got a text out of the blue saying she was going to Italy for work and suggesting we meet in Rome, I didn’t need asking twice. Truthfully, I’m a bit jumpy about money at the moment. I’ve just quit my ‘big’ job and taking on bits of pieces of freelance work because I’m determined not to rush into anything for a little while. But this was an expense worth saying ‘fuck it’ to. Do I make memories with my great friend or hang onto money I won’t be pining after on my death bed? Ross agreed, and urged me to go.
You know that sensation you get when you take a first bite of food and only at that moment you realise how madly hungry you’ve been for hours? That’s how I felt when I smelled Edwina’s perfume. Yes we can stay in touch by text, Face Time, any number of social media channels. But I hadn’t realised how much I’d needed a few days of nothing but leisure until I was in it, and I’d underestimated just how much I needed to see, hear, smell and feel my friend in real life.
It’s been a long time since I’ve spent hours and hours and hours with one person like that. And it’s even rarer for me to have time with people with whom I now share so much history. Decades. When the relationship is right, it’s effortless. I'm sure you also have those friendships that you can just pick up, even after months, as if you’ve seen each other only the day before. That’s us two. A few more days and I’m sure we’d have fallen into companionable silences at points. But for three days we practically couldn’t breathe for cramming all the lost time. We talked and laughed and reminisced and bitched and moaned - the kind of rambling chit chat that leaps around wildly. One minute we’re having a profound and intimate conversation about parenting on the other side of grief - Edwina’s husband Andrew, our wonderful friend, died from cancer in 2016, and they have two children. Then the next second it’s fantastically ludicrous - we had a highly enjoyable, very silly spat with a pushy tourist, which I’m not even going to try and explain because that’s the point: it’s a new brilliant memory that only we have. Well, Pushy Bitch has the memory too, but I suspect her version is different to ours.
Oh by the way: Rome’s nice innit?! I’d never been before. And because, as I mentioned, Edwina is all class, she has been a million times, and speaks Italian. So I just had to follow her every command as she showed me around the city with all the knowledge and confidence of a Roman emperor. That’s basically the dynamic of our relationship. As another of my favourite Aussies, Donna Ida says, in every relationship there is the leader horse and the follower donkey. In this duo, I’m most definitely the Eeyore to her Shergar. It’s been that way since the beginning. Once, when we were 22, Edwina came round to my awful London flat to find me so ill with the flu I was sobbing. She nipped to Tesco and came back armed with fresh ingredients for a Thai peanut curry that I swear to you, I can still taste. She told me off for letting myself get so rundown. Eeyore dutifully started eating more vegetables. It was more than a good lunch; I had been ill, broke, exhausted and depressed (it was my first British January), and Edwina and her peanut curry fortified me with the strength to cheer up and get up.
Of course, none of the shit she’s helped me through - the plague, bad boyfriends, getting sacked etc - comes close to what she’s survived these last few years. The physical distance between us was so painful when Andrew was ill. I couldn’t even pop round to cook her a fucking curry. But even then, she and Andrew were doing what they could to make it bearable for everyone else. One of their friends took over communication duties and kept us all up to date. Andy asked for photos and stories to wallpaper his hospital room with. Ross and I sent this photo, from the one day on an Italian holiday when we allowed ourselves to leave our whiny, jet lagged toddlers with a babysitter and piss off to Capri for a few hours.
Our Roman holiday hits
OK so Rome’s pretty incredible. But for this trip, she was definitely playing a supporting role. Even so, I think I’ve found my new favourite city. Here’s some recommendations that, when I’m discussing with people in real life, I’m going to pretend are my discoveries. But really they are all Edwina’s picks.
I had flown EasyJet so I got there on time, but I was starving - £8.95 for congealed cheese on plastic white bread ain’t no meal ‘deal’, friends. Also, I found it difficult to eat on the plane once an elderly couple next to me pulled out a carton of six hard-boiled eggs and proceeded to peel and eat them, farting up the shared air for us all. Sadists. So you can imagine how long this plate of meat and cheese survived.
It’s apparently impossible to get a table here, but guess what?! Edwina knows a guy…. So my first night in Rome I got in straight away. As the name would give away, it’s right near the astonishing Pantheon, which was pleasingly empty after our dinner, so it was a good combo. I had the Roman signature dish of Alla’Amatriciana, that featured super-sized chunks of fried bacon and for that alone I will go back to Rome.

OK so here is where you can really see the difference between me and Edwina. I booked the first thing I found, so impatient I am with researching that kind of thing, because a distant Facebook friend told me their friend had stayed there and thought it was fine. It wasn’t. My room looked like a hospital room and the walls were vinyl. So I made the rash decision to see if Edwina’s place had space for me. Because Edwina has never allowed herself to be caught in a shithole in her entire life. I was so happy that they did indeed have a room that was cheaper than the hideous one I was paying for. Hotel Chapter Roma is central, beautifully designed and reasonably priced. Everyone is so friendly and the gorgeous rooms - designed by Tom Dixon, I believe - are so quiet. A real find, I’ll be going again.
Look at the cute little dressing room bit:
My favourite sight
It’s impossible to pick a favourite, everywhere you look there is something incredible, and huge. But I’m going with The Pantheon because I got this picture at an unusually quiet moment and it’s pretty cool.
The shop
Most people who know me will be shocked at the lack of Italian shopping that went on. But we were all about the walking and the talking and the eating on this trip. But I did enjoy this small boutique, Gente in the chic shopping district because it stocked a lot of local Italian brands. Ironically it is also where I discovered a British brand I’ve not heard of before and I bought this shirt.

The airport
Hear me out. Unbelievably great. The food selections are the same standard as the outside world, which is unheard of for airports. Trust the birth place of civilisation to have the only airport I’ve ever seen that approximates civilisation. This enormous Eataly branch is just the beginning of what’s on offer.
Shame on every other airport I have ever visited because now I know the truth - that it is possible to be treated like a normal human being once you’re air-side.
That’s it. The Rome Report. If you’re missing someone, let this inspire you to make a plan to see them, hear them, feel them and smell them.
Loved this. And it reminded me of this advertisement campaign called ‘the time we have left’ - a powerful reminder to sometimes say f*ck it and meet the friend even if it’s a plane ride away and money’s a bit tight
https://youtu.be/zqW8Hhzx6m4?si=i8i8Pj-DiKZDPKOa
Loved this tale! And love Rome! I need to go back. And totally appreciate smells working for some people better. Even when you’ve tried to copy. Xx