We are involved with smells from birth to death. They are mostly taken for granted and unnoticed unless especially odorous or malodorous, depending on the sensitivity of our brains.
As a child I was most receptive to the smell and taste of wine and happy about it until caught and punished for consuming the dregs in bottles (and flies, too, probably) left out for collection by our wine merchant. Emptied bottles were washed and re-used by the wine merchant in those far off days.
I certainly did not like the smell of rabbits that I had caught in snares or shot, and then paunched and skinned for the pot.
At the time of my youth I had no idea that my senses of smell and taste were so acute.I knew people by their smell and even knew when women were enduring their periods.
I put these abilities to good use later when I wrote on wine for newspapers and magazines. At tastings I was known for my direction and force of expectoration.
I remember that in middle age, and thus many years after schooldays, a man passed by me as I sat in a London bus. He had the smell of a school classmate. I felt obliged to confirm it by passing by him and turning around to get a sight of him. I was right - no doubt about it. I did not feel like renewing our acquaintance.
Again on a bus, I was aware of an unusual male perfume arriving behind me. It came from two American men whose voices had that degree of penetration peculiar to the race. But it was their conversation that made me forget their fragrance and listen to them. In considerable detail one relayed how his sister was invited to the White House in Washington and seduced by President Kennedy. As this was well before the President's peccadilloes had become common knowledge. It was fascinating information - far more interesting than the young men's aftershave.
My acuteness of smell decreased in my mid-eighties, so when I became aware of a new smell in the house in my mid-nineties, I thought that it possibly come from me. And at that time I had a dream that only people of my age and beyond were able and privileged to experience the exotic perfumes used by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. So, with this illusive smell around, was I being somehow influenced by such ridiculous dreams?
And there were also the daily aromas to join in with the confusion of now and the past.These other perfumed aromas emanate from Margreet's den every morning. Some of her more recently acquired scents come from the Middle or Far East. They are heady and lustrous. Her French ones are finer and more sophisticated in their complexity. But do they or any others in their freshness or decline have any bearing on this illusive smell that sometimes surrounds me? What is it, I wonder?
I think I'll run the bath.
