My film, by the way, has been submitted to the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and The Edinburgh Film Festival so wish me luck – there's a still from it, above.
I am on the Internet in Starbucks, by the way, as we
have moved to a new apartment and our wi-fi doesn't start till next
Wednesday – now:
If I was to ask you what your favourite smell was –
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 worked 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; I
delivered to the big posh school, in Wellington, and that 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.
By the way this Wellington School is not the famous
public school but it certainly looked like one.
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.
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 know what it is
by now!
As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the
West Midlands, and where sterilised milk is/was 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 amount of sterilised – or sterra as they called it –
they bought. Okay so I generalise but sociology generalises too
otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!
On Friday evenings I had to collect 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 and in 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
money for the seven pints of milk he had in the 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 ask you this – I was going to write this
post today about something else.
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 at my choice – 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.
Laters!!
