I was a young child in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the world I grew up in was saturated with everyday scents that were distinctive and ever-present. These smells, like the pop music of the time, formed the background texture of my life. Most have vanished. Some for good reason: safety, health and progress. Others were lost due to modern manufacturing processes and production methods.
The most noticeable absence is tobacco smoke, especially from pipes and cigars. Those two had a richness I associated with sophistication and gentility. I don’t advocate smoking, and I’m glad it’s gone. But I miss the smell, at least from pipes and cigars. Cigarettes didn’t smell as nice.
Other scents I miss are: petrol fumes, coal fires, the smell of woollen school blazers and caps, the real leather of school satchels, chalk dust, wax crayons, freshly sharpened pencils and rubbers (erasers). Wellington boots also had a smell. So did the diesel from buses, trains and ferries. As did sweets (candy) with their variety of aromas. And bookshops smelled of paper and cardboard.
Everywhere had a smell! Now, virtually nothing has!
Clean air. Sanitised surfaces. Air-conditioned buildings that emit nothing at all. Supermarkets are scentless. Public transport provides no odour, unless something has gone wrong. Homes are heated by scentless electricity, not by gas or paraffin heaters, that had “cosy” aromas.
This isn’t just nostalgia. Something has been lost; faded away without mourning. Smell is the oldest sense we have, wired directly into memory and emotion. The scents of childhood shaped us, or they did so for me. They fashioned a world rich in texture and associations, that you carried with you. Today, we have replaced scent for sterility.
I miss the world when it smelled of life.
