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…