That old familiar scent of dampness hung in the air and I knew that summer was done.
It is an astounding thing the sense of smell isn't it? It is the ability to remember specific smells that I find most amazing. Autumn has that very specific damp, slightly musty smell and I feel sure that if you were blindfolded and taken in the Tardis to somewhere in Autumn that you would know instantly that it was so. My life is littered with memory points stored by their smell and I am frequently transported back to them in a nano second of picking up a scent that duplicates one of them.
For instant whenever I toast white bread (not brown or Granary, just white and it must be under the grill not in a toaster) I immediately picture the small staff refreshment room in the little Fine Fare Supermarket that I managed in the Goring road in Worthing. Despite being over 30 years ago it conjurers up a clear image of that room with the window to the right, the little inadequately sized table up against the opposite wall and the massively over sized Cheeseplant which somehow had survived to grow the full width of one wall and straddling across half of another. We had owned many Cheeseplants but they had never survived more than a few months at home. On the back wall was the kitchen work surface with a kettle, some cups often left in the sink with diluted bleach in them to get rid of the stains and a couple of loaves of bread donated by the business so staff could have some toast at morning break time. It is that specific smell from that particular grill in that room which my memory involuntarily jumps to and all of the above appears in my mind for the briefest of moments as if I were looking at a photograph of the scene, really powerful.
Another example is the ever so distinctive smell of the road works when I used to live in London back in the 70's. As a kid I walked to school and they seemed to be forever digging some bit of road up which meant digging into the London Clay and that smell is so strong in my mind that I can 'picture it' even now as I write this several hundred miles and 40 years away from it. Whenever I visit London and if I smell it, no matter where I smell it, my mind is transported back to the street in which I grew up.
If I linger a little too long down the Supermarket cake aisle I am reminded of the sweet, sweet smell of the inside of the Mr Kipling and Lyons cake delivery vans. They would pull up to our shop and I would agree the order then myself and the cake van driver would go to the van where he would open the back doors and this strong sugary sweet smell would hit me right in the face every single time.Yet another of those smells that I haven't forgotten.
Probably one of my favourites is the smell of raw bacon in the butchers where I buy my bacon up here. That scent takes me way back to another Fine Fare Supermarket in Leamington Spa. I was in charge of the Delicatessen there and I really loved it. The smell is not just that of the raw smoked bacon but of the bacon first thing in the morning as I set my counter up. The big walk in chiller was closed all night and so the bacon smell built up and when I opened the fridge door first thing in the morning SMACK my nose was treated to an assault of that smoky briny bacon. I am near salivating now at that memory smell.
It is so refined that for instance the smell of diesel soot reminds me of the No.7 Route-master bus whilst the smell of diesel itself flashes up a picture of me standing in the engine compartment of a narrow boat preparing to stuff my hand down the weed hatch.
The list is really big, now I think of it. I was in the village hall gym and as I lay on the parquet floor the smell of the wood mixed with the thin layer of dust took me right back to when I was a cub scout and our meetings in our school hall. It ranges from the new car smell which I hope many of you will associate this phenomenon with through to the sea smell of a Cornish fishing village including the smell of the Off License that I worked in and even the B.O. of a specific member of staff (a sort of stagnant baked beans smell).
They are indeed not always happy memories, hence I do not like the smell of hospitals, or alcohol on peoples breath or cannabis as they pull me back to specific memory points which I'd rather not be reminded of. But none the less you have to marvel at such a powerful sense, it is truly extraordinary.
Where was I?
Oh yes the Summer........
It had shot by this year faster than I can remember, probably because we had been so busy this year. On Friday we had the first single day in which there was no one staying in either the B&B or the Cottage since way back at the beginning of July. Whilst this is clearly good news in regards to the business it is fair to say that it has taken a toll on us both leaving us quite weary and in need of a break which we aim to take later this month.
With the coming of Autumn so follows some yearly tasks one of which is the ordering and storing away of fire wood. Unfortunately the wood store shares a space with the garden store and in the chaos of the summer the whole thing had become an utter mess. So I took an afternoon to have a complete sort out of both in preparation for the delivery of the wood.
In doing so I ended up replacing all of Percy Gandons gardening tools back in their bespoke brackets.The guy was a perfectionist. None of these generic garden shed tool hooks from B&Q for him, oh no, no he hand crafted each bracket to fit each tool individually and so I find that despite the shears being blunt and the lawn edge clippers ceased up I simply cannot remove them, it would be wrong.
Finally the two areas now clearly defined I was ready for the wood and a few days later I spent four hours moving the wood from the street to the store. Eventually the task was done and so I did what I do.......... I took a photograph of it. A job well done I feel.
Now it is just a matter of bringing in the rest of the harvest including picking all the apples off that apple tree!
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