Vocal Voices

I was chopping up celery the other day to put in soup and the smell took me back to my childhood when we would catch the number 20 bus to Eccles and it stopped right outside the market where a stall sold celery and the smell always invaded the bus as there were no doors on buses back then...(60s). I found the memory overwelming and yet I have chopped up celery times over the 45 years since I left the area.
Are there any smells that take you back like that?

Oh yes...the smell of baking takes me right back to mum standing in the kitchen surrounded by her wonderful cakes.

And soup..she made (still does) wonderful lentil and bacon soup.

Fish! Dad used to bring the takings home from his fish shops every evening and count the notes at the kitchen table. They were always covered in fish scales and brother and I used to sniff them and tell him his money was smelly

Can't walk past a fish shop or fish counter in supermarkets and sniff, catch a whiff without remembering.

The smell of tar
When we were little our Mum made us walk behind
the lorry that was tarring the roads.
She told us to breathe in deep and it would be good
for our chests
I love the smell to this day

lissie

privet bushes, where we lived there were hundreds of them and that smell in the summer takes me right back to my childhood summers

Sat in the chemists yesterday waiting for my prescription a young lady with her toddler sat behind me. The sweet smell of perfume 'Baby with dirty nappy' soon hit, and that brought back memories, oh yes.

Memories of trying to mask the smell while making a dignified exit. Trying to find anywhere suitable to do a nappy change... I do mean 'anywhere'. Pretending that the smell, after the nappy change, is not coming from the old Asda bag I am carrying, no ,no, no....

Yes, smells can bring back many childhood memories.

I can remember smells from my school days, even though I never actually experience them now:

Plasticene - when, as a seven-year olds we used to make things out of it in school.

Gripfix ( a white paste in an aluninium pot, that smelled like almonds) that we used when
making things out of cardboard.

The Gas Works = When we had a chest infection, the doctor gave us a note to take there.
You had to stand by an open manhole for ten minutes and breath in the pungent fumes that came
from the raw coal gas. It really worked, too!

miasmum wrote:privet bushes, where we lived there were hundreds of them and that smell in the summer takes me right back to my childhood summers

Oh yes, I'm with you there All the gardens round us had privet hedges

A great range of memory smells although Aggers sniffing raw coal gas is a new one on me

Lozzles wrote:

miasmum wrote:privet bushes, where we lived there were hundreds of them and that smell in the summer takes me right back to my childhood summers

Oh yes, I'm with you there All the gardens round us had privet hedges

Oh me too