Day 12 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available.

A smell can be a most evocative sense. It can stimulate memory, facilitate calm or revulsion, or provide us with timely information.

If I smell new carpet, I am transported back to my Year 1 classroom which had been renovated and new carpet laid. That’s an associated formed around 35 years ago. The smell of a basketball stadium: that combination of sweat, dencorub, and timber treatment to this day hastens my heart beat.

Today I was between meetings so I had the opportunity to park near the beach for a few minutes. As I opened the car window, my olfactory senses were treated to that wonderful scent of salt air traveling on a warm breeze. That is much nicer smell than that of a dirty nappy, which over the past 8 years I’ve become far to familiar with.

A smell I miss is the cooking of roast beef and yorkshire pudding. That was a staple of my childhood diet but I don’t have the time or inclination to make it myself these days.

Of all our senses, I think smell is the most associative. I don’t think vision, hearing, touch or taste can transport us back in time or recall memories of a person or place the way a smell can. We should probably take more time out to appreciate our noses.