How closely are scents linked to your memory? The merest passing breath and I'm five years old, waiting with my parents in the queue at the teashop on the Downs at Babbacombe; ambre soleil oil/steam/hot metal/flowers/mown grass. Or it might be the nose prickle of faded iodine (or was it bromine?) , the fruity fizz of organic acids, the warm roundness of wood polish used on the benches, and old char of gauze pads atop metal tripods and wooden tongs, blackened from a too-high bunsen flame, that sings through my memory every time I pass a chemistry lab.
The evocative aroma of gunpowder and cordite misting the early morning air of november 6th... complex fruit-and-alcohol nosed on wet decembre lunchtimes that mean christmas cake is baking... summer meadows awash with a rippling sea of buttercups, smelling of 'green'... old roses drooping against the radiated heat of a frost-cracked and crumbling wall, the red brick almost black in the luminous l'heure bleu of high summer... petrichor... line-dried sheets...
What scents drop you back through time? 
Happy #NationalFragranceDay #penhaligons #penhaligonade
