Saturday, July 12, 2008

Smell-o-vision

A long, long time ago I had one of my first proper attacks of the munchies. I sat in a corner on my own, stoned out of my tree and working my way carefully through a packet of chicken flavour crisps.

Every now and again I would look up and say 'but they're so... *chickeny*!' Nobody was listening to me, they were all listening to Frank Zappa instead. Or possibly Captain Beefheart. I had a lot of nights like that a long, long time ago.

I was reminded of the chicken flavour crisps yesterday, when I got out of the car at the New Building (I have been going to work, but I have not been cycling there, I am exhausted at the end of the day as it is). Just before I got out of the car I gave my nose a good blow, then I cleared up the resulting mess -- there is still a ridiculous amount of it -- and set off across the car park. Halfway to the door there was a gust of wind, and it stopped me in my tracks.

I could smell the air! It smelt amazing! Salty and damp and fresh and amazing. I leant against the wall and breathed and breathed and breathed. Then I went inside and I could smell even more things, toast and carpet tiles and printers. Sadly, by the time I got my coffee, my sense of smell had gone again, but it comes back sporadically, in brief bursts. I get to smell the inside of a tissue. Or the ends of my fingers. Things that don't normally have a smell. While food, perfume, wine, flowers are still largely lost to me.

It's the weirdest thing. I was in olfactory heaven in a car park by a ring road. Who knows what the seaside would have done to me.

joella

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