The Fifth Sense

If you smell gas, please call this number.

If you smell burnt toast you could be having a stroke. (Although as Freud famously said, “Sometimes burnt toast is just burnt toast.”)

Cigarettes smell of nostalgia, but the stale cigarette smell is obnoxious and reminds you that you once worked in an office where people smoked at their desk all day, sometimes lighting one cigarette from the embers of the previous one.

What about the air on a hot day after it’s rained? Seaweed at low tide? Seaweed at high tide?

Travelling through Essex on the train, farmers fertilising the fields produced what became known as ‘the Chelmsford pong’.

When I sent letters or packages to Canada, Cath said they smelt of my flat. The smell lingered, but nothing lasts forever.

If you leave pasta boiling too long and all the water evaporates you’re left with a smell like popcorn.

My dad once burnt something (while cooking?) and ash filled large parts of the house. Flakes settled like dust over my bookshelf. As a child I loved starting fires. Light one match and then use the flame to ignite another. Set fire to a whole box and watch as the contents would flare up and then gutter, flare again. Tiny explosions.

Open a window to dispel the odour. Don’t get caught.

We didn’t have fire alarms back then. I never burnt the house down though, unlike my dad who must’ve come close if there was ash on my bookcase.

Glossy magazines had the best smell. If the contents inside disappointed, you could always just smell the pages.

Second hand books are musty, it's part of their charm. If they bottled the smell of a second hand bookshop some people would buy it. Which bookshop? Any bookshop. The second hand bookshop near Peel metro station in Montreal with the big ginger cat sleeping on the counter next to the cash register.

Every bookshop needs a cat. Every cat café needs more books.

Petrol’s not shy, is it? When it enters the room it wants you to know it’s there.

A child tugs urgently on the sleeve of their mother and asks, “What does space smell like?”

Perfume. Parfum. Body spray. Cologne. Deodorant. Oranges. Bananas. Physalis. Draw up a list. Tick for yes. Cross for no.

Weed is the worst smell of all.

It’s raining, so we’d better come inside now.

When I fall asleep I won’t smell anything.