Smell

The smell of cooking garlic floats in through the open window from a neighbour's kitchen.  For an instant I'm back in the 1980s in Paris outside a restaurant on a humid summer's evening.  Never mind the madeleines, it's smell not taste that does it for me.

I read once that smell is the most evocative of the senses, that it accesses the greatest amount of memory stored in the computer that is the brain.  I believe it.  Woodsmoke, oh yes especially woodsmoke. An earlier French memory from my au pair days in 1968 of the host family's chateau (they had aristocratic forebears).    Situated near Troyes, seventeenth century or earlier, there were a multitude of  beautiful but shabby and dilapidated high-ceilinged rooms and, above all, massive fireplaces where logs from the estate had burned for several centuries. The smell of woodsmoke had over time permeated the walls and it hung in the air, even in high summer. I can't describe the intensity of that smell, not that it was unpleasant, rather it was subtly sensual and thus almost frightening to my awkward and dislocated eighteen-year old self.

And also:  Roasting coffee beans. Lilac. Horses. Autumn mornings. New books.  Creosote.  Brief but oh-so-detailed scenes from the past - places, seasons, houses, people - attach themselves to each one.

Hoping for more. Counting on more. Smells and memories.

Memory

 

I find myself thinking about childhood and those iconic bottles and packages that are printed on the memory, probably until the day I die.   It was just after the war and rationing was still in force and I was one of the first generation of National Health babies.

So this concentrated National Health orange juice, recently issued to families with young children, would have been ground-breaking.  Likewise the thick, viscous cod liver oil which my mother was convinced I would refuse but which - perversely - I used to love.  The morning ritual was this: as soon as I was old enough I would clamber up to stand on one of  the wooden kitchen chairs while my mother measured out a spoonful of the stuff.  I was now at her level, she didn't have to bend down and the oil didn't get spilled.   A special spoon.  Mouth open and in it went.

Then I remember the green gingham dress with parallel ruffles on the bodice.  The old wireless which we hung onto for years afterwards with all those names on the dial (Luxembourg, Cork, Hilversum. Moscow). Listen With Mother.  The flowering cherry just the other side of the back fence, bordering the gravel pit. One day in spring, maybe another sun-filled May day like today, the sight of the cloud of pink blossom against the bluest of blue skies is my first recollection of being awed by beauty.  I think my heart turned over.  

We moved from this house when I was five years old.