Perfumes, Scents and Smells

THE PERFUME I WEAR NOW

I've used Estée Lauder's Beyond Paradise for years... so much so that eldest grandson mentioned to his mother recently that someone they'd just met wore the same perfume as his grandmother!

Recently I've been using 'Pure' by DKNY, which is more expensive, (because they didn't have the Paradise one in stock) but I think I'll go back to the Beyond Paradise because I'm getting far fewer compliments than I used to....

SMELLS I LOVE

Strawberries and raspberries, freshly picked basil, mint, gardenias, roses, lemons, limes and mandarins, chocolate, toast, freshly cut grass.

Osmanthus fragrans – very small flowers but highly perfumed

The crushed leaves of lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla)

Roast lamb with a bit of rosemary, and some mint sauce!

That very young baby smell

Love the scent of a good Sauvignon Blanc

MEMORIES

Pine trees –we had small ones at Christmas… but walking past a fruit shop with them all stacked ready for sale is such a ‘Christmas’ smell….

Love the smell of freshly roasted coffee beans (reminds me  of standing in the bus queue outside Dewhurst’s in the High St, Slough when I was a teenager: they had a special fan which blew the gorgeous smell right where the bus stop was!  They also sold delicious ham carved off the bone, and had the leg sitting on its special china stand in the window….)

The scent of wattle (except it was mimosa in those days) reminds me of the markets that were in a big courtyard behind the Dewhurst shop: there was a fruit stall there and they often had branches of mimosa for sale – in the early spring I think it would have been.  I loved the smell and the bright yellow of the little flowers!

A strong garlic smell reminds of the very garlicky, strong cigarettes and male smell that hit us as we walked along an arcade of shops in Barcelona in 1957!

Eucalyptus reminds me of the storm we had in Wahroonga, January 21 1991: so many trees were stripped of their leaves, and the ‘mulch’ of fresh leaves (with twigs and branches) mixed with fallen power lines (and poles) and trees made streets almost impassable for several days….. and the scent of eucalyptus hung around for days too.

Tweed perfume – which I wore in my early twenties.

Badedas bath essence: this was the present of choice for my Mum when I didn’t know what to give her!  (She loved it!)

Carbolic – mixed with a stale beer and tobacco smell – reminds me of the New Inn, Clydach Vale (where my grandparents were managers in the early forties): the floors were washed down every morning….but it never really smelt ‘clean’!

When I was young, practically every week somewhere on my walk home from school there would be a place where they were digging up the footpath and there would be that distinctive smell of sewer…. I don’t know whether it was just the age of the pipes around Slough but those sort of road works seemed to be normal!  The flagstones would be stacked to one side; there would be ropes around the hole, and you’d often have to walk in the gutter for ten yards or so…..

I don’t know whether I really like the smell, but that hot dusty smell when it has just started raining after a hot spell is pretty distinctive.  When I was young, the tar on the roads would melt a bit (or sometimes a lot even in an English summer!) – and there would be little bubbles in amongst the small stones… we used to pop them by standing on them, and then the soles of our sandals would smell of the tar.

And a strong tarry smell, mixed with hydrogen sulphide: there was a pond of waste ‘water’ just the other side of the railway bridge on Farnham Road which I walked past on my way to the swimming pool, and it smelt disgusting!

And thinking of bad smells – we had such problems with the Jetmaster fireplace we installed in the front room at Westbrook Avenue: whenever we had a good fire going pretty soon there would be a baaad smell… a combination of stale dishcloth and hot dead mouse, and we couldn’t work out how to stop it – other than stop lighting fires!!

AND just after I had posted this...

Unplanned bout of domesticity:
Just making a second cup of coffee. 'Oh, what's that funny ring left on the bench from the milk container?" Tentative smell, fishy, like anchovies.... anchovies!!!! 
The little bottle of anchovies had fallen onto its side in the shelf above the milk and the orange juice (and further down were salad dressings etc) and dripped oil...drip, drip, drip.... amazing just how far it had spread!! And those door shelves are not easy to wash in the sink - water spurts out in unexpected places...