Smells of my childhood
Feeling nostalgic!
Badedas body wash smells of bathtime at my gran's house. Her bathroom was super chintzy and so exactly her. The suite was brown (not avocado - my other grandparents did though) and the bathroom was carpetted, doilies everywhere, with tiles of flamenco dancers, and a knitted tea cosy-esque cover for the spare loo roll that sat on the cistern. Wouldn't want it to be naked.
When I say there was a duck toy you're going to think a rubber duck but it was made of hard plastic and so lifelike in its detail. My sister and I would sing and my gran would call us a cat's chorus. Which, rude.
Then we'd go to bed on a blow-up on my gran's bedroom floor. She'd tell us funny stories about the Blitz and we'd race to fall asleep before she did because she snored like the absolute clappers.
One of my favourite smells is cut privet hedge. Cut grass is nice and all but cut privet is so specific to my childhood home and the garden I loved.
Both sides were privet and I think it's going out of fashion now because, you know, you've got to cut it. But it's so much more fun than a fence. Ecological and smells so good, the trimmings wrapped up in old sheets to go to the recycling centre. I could just roll around in them.
Part of the hedge was a gooseberry bush. There were all sorts of nests and animal tunnels. Including a child tunnel. A gap into next door we used to go through to play with our neighbour, or vice versa. Thirty years since we left that house we're still close with the neighbouring family, they are family.
My parents were vegetarian and raised my siblings and I vegetarian. In the Eighties. Which meant a lot of the whole food shop. There's always jokes to be made about mung beans but we more often used aduki beans which we bought dried and my mum proceeded to obliterate in the pressure cooker.
The amount of times someone sniffed suspiciously, she swore and ran to the kitchen, and the aduki beans were nuked, smelling out the house for days. Burnt aduki beans, a classic olfactory memory.
Runner-up prize to that nit shampoo that smelt so bad we'd be shampooed in the garden and left outside until it got dark because my parents couldn't bear the smell in the house.