A childhood belief about plants

Me and my mates used to believe that you could make perfume by cramming rose petals into jars of malt vinegar and washing up liquid.

We would go out on night time petal-raids of all the rose bushes in the estate. Residents would wake up to a forest of balding shrubs in their front gardens. Putting them into a washing up bowl we would then mash up the fragrant mixture with lashings of sarsons and fairy liquid. If we were feeling particularly adventurous we would do it 'wine making' style and get our bare feet in on the action. We would then wash out all my mums jam jars - anything that was just over half empty would do - and ladle the fragrant mash into the jars, where it would lay forgotten and festering until the next summer. We even designed labels and talked to our school teacher about having a stall in the school fete.