Day 26: Fox or Plum

 
This morning the woman on the treadmill next to me smelt foxy.  Not Jimi Hendrix foxy.  More like a dog fox pissing on a clump of nettles in hot sunshine.  Strong and rank, and it made my nostrils flare.  Later as I turned out of my road, I passed a man who looked at me guiltily.  I was puzzled, until I hit a pocket of arse-gas so pungent that I laughed out loud.  Outside the station, a faceful of hot, dirty bus breath.  On Ludgate Hill a whiff of London's undercarriage - a blend of shit, rotting vegetables and damp sour newsprint, with an ancient base note of plague pit.

Last January I lost my sense of smell (and taste) for two weeks.  It was miserable.  My appetite disappeared as food became disconcerting - just a serious of textures.  No sense of what I should or shouldn't put in my mouth.  I'd never consciously realised how important smell is to me. 

I was lucky to grow up on a fruit farm.  Dizzying drifts of blossom in spring - cherry, plum, apple, pear.  High summer - the jammy scent of the packing shed, trays of glossy cherries and sun-warmed strawberry punnets.  Plums, heady and sugary, oozing amber resin.  The flowery, crisp smell of an orchard of ripe apples.  And then the unmistakeable cider tang of rotting windfalls lying in the wet grass, heralding autumn's march into winter.  Bringing different smells.  Cold earth, sawn branches, bonfire smoke.  Tractor diesel fumes hanging heavy in the damp air.  Finally, that one day when the seasons turn, and the fizz of sap is on the breeze.  It is a great privilege to smell a year of Kentish fruit.  I miss it.  Hugely.  But if I concentrate hard enough, I can still smell it in my mind. 

I love my nose.  Whether it's fox or plum, I'm equally grateful.