Posie's Blog. Tales of island life on a hebridean hill farm

Posie's Blog. Tales of island life on a hebridean hill farm

Saturday 15 September 2007

Homework....sounds and smells...





Homework….I was tagged…..12 smells and sounds that would reach me anywhere….

Well I spent lots of time under canvas as a child, every holiday and most weekends. We often used to camp at Tyddyn Ceithin in Cricceith, North Wales. My tent would pitched on the banks of the river and so I used to drift off to sleep to the sound of bleating lambs and flowing water, at times the river would be bubbling and boiling, so much so that it would feel as if the tent were being drawn into the water.

The smell of sheep’s wool, not freshly sheared, but wool freshly aired by the breeze, I used to gather it off the fences as a toddler and cuddle it up to my nose. It doesn’t have the strong lanolin, greasy scent of freshly sheared wool. My mum would replace it with clean cotton wool balls, another smell that I adored. The best however was to inhale cigar or cigarette smoke through cotton wool, whoops, a product of my parents’ smoking when I was small, but a smell I vividly can recall, and one which I used to find really comforting.

I love the peaty earthy scent you get when you walk through boggy ground on a wet day.

The sweet smell of summer that you get on a hot day in late spring, as children we would lie on our coats in the playground on such days, and just soak up the scent, together with the warm sun, and the sounds of other children playing, carried on the breeze.

The sounds of children exploding with uncontrollable giggles, my mum’s piano music, which used to waft up the stairs, after my brother and I had been tucked into bed at night, and bagpipes which have the power to send shivers up my spine and bring a tear to my eye.

The sweet scent of bog myrtle which is carried in the breeze as I make my way up the hill.

The salty smell of the ocean waves breaking on the shore….

Until next time…

13 comments:

Chris Stovell said...

That's a very sensual list of smells which your writing conveys beautifully. It's been fascinating to read about the different smells people have chosen and the memories they evoke.

Westerwitch/Headmistress said...

Lovely list and apart from the camping I can empathise with all of them.

Anonymous said...

I like them. I love the smell under canvas too. Numerous camping holidays did that. Bagpipes played properly are lovely. My brother plays them. I have a photo of me dancing the highland fling and him playing the pipes! (I can still remember that dance!)

Elizabethd said...

Mmm , lovely. I know just what you mean about the smell of summer.

Milla said...

yours are all very elemental choices, very physical and a consequence of where you live in many cases - bog myrtle, sheep etc, which is interesting.

Frances said...

Hello, it is so good to be back at this place of yours!

I felt all of your sounds and smells. And again, those pictures bewitch me. So, Posie, down I scrolled, greedily reading every one of your blogs that I had missed.

You write so well, and present so many aspects of your life, that I do absolutely feel transported! Thank you so very much.

As the months have passed, I have learned so much about sheep. And about the mixture of tradition and modernity that surrounds your part of the world. Back over at CL, I always found that same contrast in what briarrose wrote about her island life and still think it intriguing.

Again, many thanks for the visit. I had a wonderful time.

xo

Anonymous said...

Great list!
Crystal xx

snailbeachshepherdess said...

lovely list...thank goodness someone else loves the sheepy smell...begining to think i was a bit odd! The new CL is out with a tale of Rosie, a picture of the Paps and a highland cow...is it you???

Suffolkmum said...

Gosh, that was lovely - Milla was right, very elemental - I really loved the memory of the water boiling and bubbling.

@themill said...

Elemental my dear Rosie, elemental.
And I still haven't done my homework!

Pondside said...

I've no idea at all of what the sheepy smell is - I may have to stop at a local farm one day and ask for a sniff! Bagpipes - yes!
Loved your list and the memories that you wrote with it.

Fennie said...

For some reason that list makes me want to send you a purple hug, Posie, I suppose because the wool thing reminds me so much of Younger Daughter when she was tiny and used to pinch fluff of anyone's jumper, or anything else she could find, and hold it against her cheek, with a big smile all over her face.

Un Peu Loufoque said...

bliss.....