I suppose the smell that comes to my mind as a city dweller is the smell of the countryside that wafted on the bus every time it stopped en route from Dublin.
Every town and village had its own peculiar aroma and I could have been blindfolded and still known where I was.
So by the time Mother ushered me off the bus outside the post office the smell of the cattle market filled my nostrils telling me we were back in good old Balbriggan.
Houses in Balbriggan smelt different from those in Sheffield, but then the air smelt sweeter too.
The sweet smell of peat fires has always been far more preferable to the pungent smell of coal and gas, and if that turf fire also contained some dried driftwood, collected from the strand after some particularly vicious storm, then is cracked and hissed and released the smell of the sea into the house.
Talking about fires, when I saw the pictures of Tankerville after the fire, my mind was yet again filled with smells of ripening tomatoes, for when I stopped in that house in the early 60s it was a working farm with greenhouses filled with tomatoes. Even now when I smell tomatoes on the plant I think of Tankerville.
Shops too also had their own smells. Kitty Whites for example had the smell of the printed word combined with the wonderful smell of sugary and sticky sweets from the dozens of glass jars that lined the wall behind the counter. All those jars of sweets each had its own distinctive smell and the ingredients were real too, not packed with man made flavours and colourings and smells but real fresh sweets.
Then there was the smell of Ice-cream.… and there is no smell quite like real fresh Ice-cream. Mmmm! Can’t you still taste how good it was…..Have you noticed that the mass-produced stuff we have today just does not taste or smell like it used to do way back then? Nor do the crisps or bottles of pop taste like they used to, or is it just me getting old and grumpy? (Don’t you dare answer that!)
You know, most food had its own peculiar smell back in the 50s and 60s, so did the shops that sold them. Tom Hagans, and Peter Cluskey’s Butcher shops always smelt of bleach and wet sawdust as well as the smell of the meat. And if you were lucky like me to be allowed in the back when a beast or a sheep had been slaughtered and was being cut up, then new and distinct smells surrounded you.
Grocery shops like Derhams, smelt of un-refrigerated cheese butter and bacon, and freshly roasted coffee (just lift the lid off the biscuit display unit and smell what real fresh biscuits should smell like… mmmmmm) as well as the smell of dry grocery items such as soaps and cleaning products.
Even the humble chemist shop had smells that chemists don’t have nowadays, for a lot of medicines way back then were made up as required and teamed and ladled in the shop.
But you know it was not just the shops that had their own smells. In the square at Balbriggan and down the steps, the public toilets added to the overall effect. As did the two changing huts on the Strand and the tunnel under the railway.
And talking about the railway, and I am talking about the days of stream, well the combination of hot oil and the sulphurous smoke is totally unforgettable.
Now while we are down beside the sea, let’s walk amongst the rocks, and smell the bitter salty smell of the seaweed being crunched underfoot, or walk down the harbour when the fishing boats are coming in and the smell of freshly gutted fish fills the air. Yet if you walked the harbour after the tide has ebbed away then your senses were bombarded with totally different smells… and not very nice smells at that… enough said.
Another smell that penetrates my mind is combined with the sight and sound of a heavy sea crashing upon the rocks of the Bower. Even now I can close my eyes and drift back in time to feel, taste and smell the salt as it splashed my face all those years ago.
I have left the best smell until last… Can you guess what it is? That’s right Spicers bread, delivered not only fresh but still steaming. It was worth a clout from Mother when we pulled the soft corners off.
So you see, memories don’t need to confined to old black and white photos stuck in some dusty old albums, but are there deep inside the mind just waiting to be released by the odd word, or sight or even smell.
Why not see what is locked away in your mind?