The memory of smells...

Smells are such nice things to remember. The strange thing is that they can be almost impossible to describe to anyone, yet the minute you whiff a certain smell, a whole lot of associated memories come flooding back.

One particular smell has stayed in my memory for a loooooooong time, but I can't for the life of me work out what it is. I have a rather vivid memory of being in my first few weeks of school, and that there would be some sort of cooking activity every Friday when we had a certain teacher. (We can't have been doing much actual cooking, as we were only 5 years old - I can't really remember how this whole cooked meal thing worked...).

Anyway, I can remember how this teacher smelled on that day. Unfortunately noone I have subsequently met has smelled like this, therefore I can't just ask someone what that smell is. Every now and then, I catch a whiff of the same smell on a person who passes me by on the street. This whole memory comes flooding back, and this rather insignificant memory has stayed with me just because of this puzzling smell. The smell would either have to be some sort of essential oil, or the effect of some sort of food sweated out on certain people.

There are smells I would love to bottle: the smell of freshly ground coffee, freshly changed sheets, babies heads, garlic frying, cumin and turmeric in a curry, the waft of jasmine as it just starts to flower (but after a while, this smell gets to be too sickly sweet, or mixed with the smell of decaying flowers), the smell of freshly dug earth, and the smell of grass when it has just rained.