I know it wasn’t plasticine but it sure smelled like it.
I was cycling through an intersection this morning and got a quick whiff of something that suddenly took me back almost forty years to my grade one class in room one at Wembley Downs Primary School with Miss van Kampen. It was a smell like plasticine. I was immediately six years old again and just starting my formal education.
I remember my first year of school being a relatively happy time. If I had the opportunity to go back there …. I’d say no thanks. Life was good then but with a beautiful wife and two enormously talented kids it’s so much better now.
Isn’t it amazing how smells can bring back such strong memories? I wonder what are the smells that bring back memories for you. Are there places you go that awaken memories simply by the odours you smell there? Do some smells bring back things you’d rather forget or are they generally happy memories?
Cycling to work each morning I head past the local drive through coffee place and take in the wonderful aroma of fresh coffee. That’s always a smell associated with good things for me.
I often smell fresh baked goods as I cycle past by the local shopping centre and as I get closer to work the smell of pies and sausage rolls wafts across from the nearby bakery.
I love the fact that I can take in so much more of the world on two wheels.
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Oh, yes, that part of the brain responsible for smells is truly amazing and, very seldom, sends me back into childhood, too.
Luckily it seems there are only smells with good associations saved in my case!
Not only for those moments but also for my purse´s sake I wish I could cycle to work. But 40 km one way is too tough for me.
The mind is an amazing thing in that it can store all that information for years and serve it up at short notice like that. A great memory and smell that Plasticine.
I LOVE the smell of plasticine – and play dough. Someone told me once that smell evokes such powerful responses and memories because it is our most “primitve” sense. Our earliest memories and emotions are linked to smell.
Apparently.
I do know that smell has a far greater power to transport me to another time, place and feeling than anything else. And isn’t it funny how few things taste as good as they smell? Coffee being a prime example.
Iris, I wonder if there are smells that manage to transport you back to your visits to Australia. 🙂
Good to hear from you, Colin. Even people who think they don’t have a great memory often just need the right key to unlock the memories they think are gone forever. You’re so right. The mind is an amazing thing.
hazelblackberry, you’re right about the coffee. I put a pot on every morning at work and one of my colleagues never touches a drop but always looks forward to wandering into the kitchen to take in the aroma.
I googled “plasticine smell” and found this wonderful blog entry. I’m writing a novel and I have to describe the smell of plasticine. A friend described Play Doh as sickeningly sweet, but that’s not how I think of plasticine. It doesn’t smell dry, smells of a vegetable but I can’t get closer than that. Can any of you plasticine lovers help?