The Oldie: Old Smells
 

The British Food Compeition was unfairly weighted against the foreigner. Consequently all the winners were Brits. But the winner of the tea-set, bill Greenwell, is of course one of us. And I won too. Good for me.

Competition No. 126
A school in Liverpool is piping peppermint smell into classrooms to soothe pupils. It made me think of the smells of my youth - so a poem on the latter subject please. Maximum 16 lines. e-mail comps@theoldie.co.uk by 2nd July. Don't forget to include your postal address.

I remember a schoolteacher called Jim Gourlay long ago characterising the smell of a primary school as 'chalk and sweat and sour milk and warm piss'. No milk now I presume. And probably no chalk either.

Tell Bill we want a photograph of the tea set!

Mom's Broccoli
 

Mom’s Broccoli

Mom’s pasta plate would feed them all—
extended family and paesani.
Witty, she amused this mob,
and sang the Great Depression Blues
when she ran out of meaty bones
and boiling broccoli fouled the air.
As I grew up, she’d often groan:
Pasta with broccoli—months on end!
At dinner once, she told her brood,
It’s all they serve in pauper’s hell.
Then holding up my school report—
a string of Ds and Es, one C—
she signaled Dad to back her up,
but he kept chewing prime filet.
Nostrils flared, she sniffed at me:
This smells of future broccoli!

Ralph

GARLIC DAYS

When I was just a baby,
garlic filled the air.
Garlic, garlic, garlic,
garlic everywhere.

When I was just a toddler,
it was the case as well:
garlic, garlic, garlic,
was all that I could smell.

When I was somewhat older,
I thought it was a gift:
garlic, garlic, garlic,
in every breath I sniffed.

Those days are now behind me.
I wonder where they went?
But garlic, garlic, garlic,
remains my favorite scent.

The tea set is a chimera, Gail.


A SONG FOR SOMEONE

We might have made sweet lovers had we met:
the train was full, the smell of rain and sweat
made me self-conscious; she sat too far down
the car with only three short stops to town -
she held a magazine, I tried to read a book.

A single glance reflected in a pane
of glass, the image in reverse, her rain-
washed smile blurred. But as the train drew in
I watched her stand and brush her dress, begin
to disembark, not bother with a second look.

Well, not exactly a chimera, but not a tea-set either.

Beautiful poem, Holly.

Old Smells

My kitchen smelled of drying sheets.
My mother smelled of lemon sweets.
My nursery smelled of orange juice
And Bruce, my friend, just smelled of Bruce.

School smelled of chalk and milk and sweat.
Cinemas smelled of cigarette,
And so did buses on the tops
And so did lots of kinds of shops.

Newspapers smelled of printer’s ink.
The rag-and-bone man smelled of drink.
The coal-man’s wagon smelled of horse.
The coal-man smelled of coal of course.

The railway stations smelled of smoke.
My boiled eggs smelled of buttered yolk.
My grandma smelled of toast and tea.
Poor people smelled of poverty.

That last line is absolutely true I can remember it vividly. The smell was difficult to describe but parts of Edinburgh, like the Grassmarket really did smell different. I would like to know whether old newspapers smelled different too. I think they did, but one forgets.

Old Smells

My father's hands, my mother's chin,
the breadbox and the laundry bin,
the curios upon the shelf,
the doorknob and the house itself.
My mother's hands, my father's chin,
the breadbox and the laundry bin.

oh well
 

My parents were both hippy folk,
As gonzo as Anubis.
They lived to groove. They loved to smoke
Their jumbo hand-rolled doobies.

The household vibe was peace and love
And liberated joking,
While ganja vapours twirled above
A scene of constant toking.

Who can forget the ambient scent
Of home-cured marijuana,
A youth and adolescence spent
In cannabis nirvana?

It gave me such a special buzz
I left my parents huffing
The day I chose to join the fuzz
To get my dope for nothing.

I've been waiting for your smellies, Bazza. Neat one!

i'm back
 

Ta muchly, John. A week & a bit in the Cantal, then visiting a dear friend in a London hospice. Glad to be back with my cats & on the D & A trail.

Bazza, Willie Nelson would love it.

I've tried again to come up with something, but it still needs work.


SMELLS OF MY YOUTH

Although I'm ninety-three years old,
I think about my boyhood days
Whenever I smell acrid mold
Or spoiled jars of mayonnaise.

Nostaligic, nasal reveries
Come back to me in bittersweet
Choking fumes of rancid cheese
And whiffs of decomposing meat.

I was just a kid. Who knew?
My mother told me that the smell
Of last month's putrid honeydew
Was sweeter than the asphodel.

Eighty years have passed since then,
And yet, in times of bitter gloom,
I often long for those days when
A stench was sweeter than perfume.

Tell me, where is the air of Mum
(Deodorant, that is, not mother)
The Johnson’s pong of baby-bum
The fruity Brut of elder brother
The gay bouquet of Aunty May
Whose Coty kiss I used to fear
Each time she came or went away –
Oh, where are the whiffs of yesteryear?

The memories are sweet and vague
Evening in Paris, Aqua Manda
Old posies clutched against the plague
Each one a potent nose-pomander
In armpit, cleavage, lady-garden
Back of neck and knee and ear
The human hum to hide and pardon –
Oh, where are the whiffs of yesteryear?

Ann,
That is brilliant!
('lady-garden' hehehe)
And what about Esso Blue, Pepsodent...?

Our smells are brilliant. Eratosphere MUST be in the money this time.

Though you are in your perfume days,
Nostrils among the crowd
And sniffers busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old honkers most:
With time you'll smell like swine,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For every schnoz but mine.

Nice one, Roger. Alas, it comes to us all... (trust me).

Jayne - I love "lady-garden". It's enjoying a bit of a vogue at the moment but it amuses me to think it may have been coined in the fifteenth century by the very chap whose idea I nicked for my entry, albeit in a different poem; ... ce sadinet ... Dedens son petit jardinet (unless anyone knows of an earlier reference?)

Dearie me. I wonder about the line 'There is a garden in her face'. And imagine that a translator renders 'sadinet' as twat. Dearie, dearie me. A bloke of course.

"Ahhhh!.....Bisto!" was a UK advertising slogan from decades back, where children said this, then went running in for dinner, with watery gravy poured over it. (I still make my mother's real gravy.)

I can think of two smells of my childhood...Ahhh!
(No, Bisto’s not one I recall,
as we always had thick, proper gravy.)
The one that stands out from them all

...is sawdust.

It’s a smell that you don’t seem to get now;
it’s all MDF, not real wood.
I watched as my father sawed, and then planed;
that smell, and the sounds, were so good.

Mmm... rice pudding.

Yes, I remember, I’d come home from school;
(I walked, and my mother was there!)
the mingled aromas of milk, butter,
nutmeg and rice would fill the air.

It’s sad, but I think I can safely say
that kids wouldn't know either smell today.