For more than thirty years, The Villagers was the community newspaper of Balquhidder, Strathyre, Lochearnhead & St Fillan’s. As of 11 January 2024, we're sorry to say that The Villagers is no more. The current team has been putting the paper together for more than a decade now, and we've reached the stage where we haven't been able to find anyone to take over the tasks of production, sales, editing and distribution. We’ll keep the web site up for the moment and will look at making the archive of past issues available for the long term.
The article on perfume by Ben Reedy is well written and very interesting and it’s reassuring to know that natural animal scents are now replaced by synthetics. The mention of Patchouli brought back fond memories of the 60s but shouldn’t we be concerned nowadays about the plant being grown alongside palm oil when those plantations are ruining the ecology of Indonesia! There are perfumed products all around us these days – do we really need this? Many people who suffer allergic reactions cannot tolerate perfume, especially in aerosol sprays and seek out products with more acceptable scents. Would Ben Reedy care to write about this in the future? Marguerite Kobs