My Favourite Smell

Wrekin College

If I was to ask you what your favourite smell is – what would you say? Your favourite after shave lotion? Some expensive scent like Chanel? 

Let's think of something else like the smell of rain; smells good doesn't it but what if it was from an aerosol!! The smell of lavender from a fabric softener? What about the smell of shit from an aerosol. Smells just as good to me as anything from an aerosol like rain or lavender.

When I was a student I worked as a milkman for a short while, and oh how it sent me round the twist. I was at a dairy in Wellington, Shropshire; I had to cycle on a old bike for half an hour every morning at the crack of dawn, get to the bakery, load my van and go out to deliver milk.

It was an electrically controlled vehicle powered like the dodgem cars at a fairground, which I have written about before on here. It had two pedals, like an automatic car, but we used our left foot on the brake with the right on the accelerator which is not recommended in cars.

Each house I delivered milk to had its own smell; the the big posh school, Wrekin College, had it's own smell too; the masters and mistresses and the professors lived 'in house' and when I delivered I discovered my favourite smell, a welcoming smell the greatest smell in the world . . . .. well bear with me, indulge me for a little while and see where this goes. Believe me I don't know at the moment which, I think, is the reason I write this blog, which is to discover what's going on in my mind.

After I delivered to the school – which was to various staff members as well as the place where they cooked for the pupils – I went to private houses and as usual I formed impressions of each of them. 

I could kind of tell who were the clever people, the people who were newly rich (the nouveau riché), the pretentious, the thoroughbreds, the educated and the people I envied, at that time, but no more.

For instance, there was a big house called 'Mad-hatters' another called 'Karjohn' and it became obvious to me that Karen and John had named the latter and didn't have much of an imagination – okay, okay they couldn't call their semi-detached 'Grey Gables' or anything like that, but why not leave it just to its number? 

Mad-hatters had my favourite smell and every time I went there I could tell that they were a warm family – and indeed they were – with their multitude of children (or what seemed a multitude) and great taste in cars, clothes, furniture and the very building itself. 

Each time I opened their gate, carrying three bottles of Jersey Cream milk (in one hand I venture to add) the smell would hit me the closer I got to the kitchen – of course you can guess what it is by now! 

As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the West Midlands, and where sterilised milk was and is also available, meant the people who bought it didn't have a fridge or were brought up in a household who didn't have a fridge, and if you have never tasted sterilised milk you have never suffered. 

Of course if you haven't tasted Jersey Cream Milk you've never tasted milk.

By the way everything in America is homogenised; you get skimmed, semi-skimmed and full cream milk but it's all - - - homogenised! 

But that's America; let's go back to Wellington: there was a big house on the corner of a very big street – in fact I think it was actually on a roundabout; it had a wide gateway, which was surrounded by a high privet, and I could drive the van – hang on it was called a milk float – I could drive the milk float, and the drive had enough room for me to get in and turn around quite easily.  

Living in this house was a very tiny woman with a very high squeaky voice. I don't know what kind of house it was, but there were loads of teenagers hanging around all the time, and sometimes, I could smell dope – yes I knew the smell of dope I was at drama school even though I never smoked any. 

I think, in retrospect, that it might have been some kind of half way house, with the tiny woman working for some kind of rehab organisation; I had to deliver all kinds of milk to them, apart from the expensive kind, and I figured that the inhabitants were from broken homes and dysfunctional families, because of the large order of sterilised – or sterra as they called it – I delivered.

Okay so I generalise, but sociology generalises too, otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!

On Friday evenings I collected money from the customers, which meant calling around at their houses; some people would leave their money on the doorstep, in the mornings, but one particular man would invite me in to his house: as soon as I went in, it was quite obvious he was anticipating my visit. I followed him to the back part of his house to a tiny room. In this room there was a table, with nothing but an exercise book laid open to a particular page. Next to the page, was a little bit of money; enough for the seven pints of milk I had delivered that week; I had to take the money, but not before I signed for it.

After that he walked me to his door and got on with his oh so busy life – I don't think!!!!

Now let me tell you this – I was going to write this post today about something else – and it was this:

When the nuclear accident happened in Chernobyl, the population were told that they had to leave - every single one of them. They were told they could only take one thing away with them, and the people scurried around to choose and find, find and choose and take it to their new life, wherever that might be. One man chose a door – a single door; the door had been used to lay out members of his family when they died. . . . and I got to thinking what would I take – what would it be? I thought about it for some time and was disappointed that I couldn't think of anything so what would yours be?

But back to my favourite smell – bacon. The smell of cooking bacon and indeed the smell of cooking and food, when going in to people's houses, is so welcoming that any attempt to cover it with aerosols or fresh air is to be discouraged.

But the smell of bacon and the taste of it – to me – are two totally different things: It's nearly as disappointing as the taste of coco cola.