This morning I brought in a load of washing off the line and it had the smell of having been dried in the sunshine and it reminded me of the “smell of happiness.”
Smell is an underrated sense and it has very strong links with nostalgia, one whiff and you can be right back in another time and place. So I asked myself, “what is the smell of happiness?”
When I was a kid we holidayed in a place where the pumice and grass used to bake under the sun and give off a very particular smell, it was the smell of summer for me. And the smell of trout cooking in an electric fry pan.
When it rains on tarmac there is an ‘after rain’ smell that reminds me of being refreshed on muggy February days.
My Mum used to wear Estee Lauder Youth Dew and when I was a kid I would wake up and smell it in the room and know that she had checked on me when she came home from a night out. The chocolate was beside my bed and the covers were pulled up and I felt safe and loved and happy.
And the smell of chlorine is a smell of happiness because it means I am close to a pool. I am swimming in the Cambridge pool, a 50 metre open air pool. I have a lane to myself and I dive in and away I go, heaven.
The smell of candle smoke when a candle is snuffed out, there is something about that I really love. So close your eyes and think about it, what is the smell of happiness for you?
thomasbrowne 