No doubt you’ll have seen me mention before that I get some great freebies through my day job. We work with a company that provides our ad-buying platform and they always have the most awesome prizes for the quizzes when they do sessions with us. So it was through work connections that I suddenly found myself recently the owner of a Jo Malone candle. I’ve never had the inclination to purchase one. Of course, I like the finer things in life, as you all know, but the prices seem ridiculously expensive for a candle. I’m a hun. You all know it, I know it, and my local B&M certainly knows it because that is the only place that gets the portion of my monthly budget reserved for nice-smelling candles. It’s swings and roundabouts. Some of their bigger ones last months and the “novelty” tealights like the Refresher or Drumstick scented ones last about the duration of a bath (although after this situation, I rarely have candles in the bath now).

When I posted my new freebie on my socials, people were acting like I’d won the lottery. Comments and comments told me how lucky I was. And I felt lucky. I’ve been through a tough time and self-care is incredibly important to me, so yes, bring it on, I deserve a good bloody candle!

Despite my previous unfortunate incident with candles in the bath at my recent weekend away, I still decided the best place to try my new was a nice relaxing bath. I even cracked out my Panpipe spa bangers playlist on Spotify and turned the big light in the bathroom off. Even though I had the candle on my bath tray, right underneath my nose, I have to admit I couldn’t smell much. “It’s probably the steam,” I thought to myself, while simultaneously congratulating myself on coming up with a potentially scientifically accurate reason for my new “magic” candle being shit. Out of the bath, I put the candle on the windowsill next to my bed while I relaxed and watched a documentary. I still couldn’t smell much. I won’t try to kid you all that I know what a Freesia smells like but I certainly know a pear and I could not smell pear. Alas, I persevered, thinking that maybe once it burned down a bit it would smell more. 

It did not. 

Not only did it barely smell of anything, but it also lasted about four days being lit for a couple of hours each evening. My £3.99 B&M number smelled better and lasted twice as long. My verdict? Colossal waste of money. And that’s coming from someone who once genuinely looked into buying a goat.

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