There are times when you come across an odour and you are immediately reminded of something. That something can even be from your early childhood. I love these moments of remembering…
In general I love the smell of the freshly cut grass. It always brings me back to the summer school holidays. It used to be pretty hot in the summer and people employed by the city council would go around with lawnmowers and cut the grass in the parks and by the pavements. And I just used to stand on the balcony and wish they stop those loud machines because it was 8 in the morning and I still wanted to sleep.
Another thing I like to smell is also connected to summer. If you remember, and of course you do because I just said it in the previous paragraph, summers used to be very hot where I grew up so every time when it rained I enjoyed it a lot. I used to love going out and riding my bicycle in the rain. But what it also brought was an unmistakable odour.
The sun heated up the dust on the roads and the way it mixed with the summer rain created a smell so unique that I haven’t experienced it anywhere else but home.
And then there are smells that only exist in one place. Such is the smell of my grandma’s room. Indescribable, I never got to analyze what made it up but it is something that I would recognize immediately .
Perfumes. Not very fond of them. For some time we used to have a neighbour whose daughter’s room was right below mine. The girl used a fragrance that I liked a lot and could smell it quite often in the summer when our windows were usually open. It was a very pleasant flowery scent and one day in the not too distant past I think I came across it somewhere again which of course reminded me of those times.
Strange thing that your own perfume can remind you of places and memories too. I just had such an experience the other day when I was going out and used my body spray and the smell of it suddenly transported my mind back to the days I spent in Vietnam. Which is interesting because I had that perfume for a long time. Probably that was such a unique place that my brain made the connection with that instead of my room in London.
Ah, the human mind…
Bus 64 