30 August 2010

Sustainable communities – that’s what we’re promoting. And one of the elements that constitute a vibrant, living community is the distinctive smell it has, comprised of a unique and ever-changing amalgam of aromas. However our heard world has become poorer as many of the traditional smells we used to associate with particular places and communities have weakened or disappeared – whether it’s the distinctive aroma of bakeries or laundries or breweries or… the five lost or disappearing smells highlighted in this article.

FISH
A large area around fishing ports like Aberdeen used to be permanently pervaded with the smell of fish - a characteristic reek caused by smoking, curing, the rotting of discarded guts and fins and other unwanted fish-bits, and the impregnated wood of fish boxes and fishing boats. Now, even around major landing and processing harbours, there's hardly a whiff of fishy aroma, the result of hygiene and waste regulations and the replacement of wooden boxes with non-porous plastic.

MANURE
Wake up, smell the manure! It used to be delivered in lorry loads and dumped on the pavement to be wheelbarrowed away by keen gardeners, often sharing a load, to spread on their rose beds and potato patches. There was an Alloa firm who marketed their product with the slogan “Have Dung, Will Travel”, playing on the title of a TV Western of the time, “Have Gun, Will Travel”. Ah, the fresh smell of the farmyard! Oh dear, the pungent pong of decomposing bovine waste (other names are available to describe this product).

LINOLEUM
In the late nineteenth century Kirkcaldy became the biggest producer of linoleum in the world. Its factories exuded a distinct reek, the pervading smell of hot linseed oil, used to make linoleum cement which formed sheets on a jute backing. The not-unpleasant perfumed air was immortalised in the last lines of the poem, The Boy in the Train, by Mary Campbell Smith about a wee boy making a train journey, "For I ken masel' by the queer-like smell / That the next stop's Kirkcaddy". Linoleum is still made in the Lang Toun.

BANDA COPIER
Before photocopiers and laser printers there was the Banda copier, used universally in educational institutions. You wrote or typed on a stencil, the stencil was fixed to a drum, and hand-cranking produced the copies. And there was the smell, the lovely smell of the alcohol-based purpley ink. In the sixties and seventies everyone - teachers and students - sniffed the paper. And it didn’t do anyone any harm… any harm…any harm… any har…

BURNT TURNIP
In English usage it's called a swede. Traditionally in Scotland it's a turnip (in my youth what the English called a turnip was distinguished as a 'white turnip'.). And at Hallowe'en this Swedish, hardcore root vegetable - laboriously hollowed out and pierced for eyes and nose - has increasingly been supplanted by that alien, soft-fleshed, seedy, cucurbitaceous fruit, the pumpkin. And so has faded the aroma of charred turnip-flesh spiced with an undertone of hot wax and thus has dimmed the turnip-lantern-light of the world. See Making a Turnip Lantern.

Wee pic at top shows two children from a sustainable community in their traditional dress, enjoying the selection of aromas which surround them in their wee village among the bonnie blooming heather somewhere in the misty highlands.

Have you any favourite smells? Do tell us about them!

< Prev		Next >