Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

  Cinnamon and ginger in your favourite coffee shop, Crisply ironed shirts and the smell of polished shoes, Fragrant fallen leaves upon the gently warming soil, And frost assaults your nose in riotous shades of blue.   Richly scented candles and firelighters in the stove, Soups and stews and comfort foods simmering on the hob, The smell of car exhausts that lingers in the air, The odour of new notebooks you’ve bought for your new job.   The smell of the lawn’s last haircut before it goes to sleep, The final hurrah of flowers, including the wild roses. Polish on kitchen table, and oil on oak worktops Filling the hungry wood and filling up our noses.   Fragrant cocoa replaces tea as my supper drink of choice, Hot water bottle smells upstairs before we go to bed. Smelly umbrellas and wellies herald wetter days this month, And the spicy tang of Vapour Rub to clear my stuffy head.   Fragrant sun-warmed fruit brings thoughts of ...

I have a time machine, but instead of me using it, rather it uses me.   I can’t often control the journeys, but they are often marvellous, sometimes emotional, sometimes hilarious, occasionally too sad to bear. You’ve probably got one, too. Not a Jules Verne contraption, of course, unless there’s something you’re not telling me?! No, my/your time machine is our sense of smell, and it drags you, unbidden, years and miles into your past, making you bear witness to your younger self. What sends you back in time? Certain cooking smells?   Perfume?   Woodsmoke?   Warm, damp earth?   Fresh paint or creosote? For me it can be raspberries cooking away in a pan, that takes me back to being 7 or 8, and watching mum making jam in our tiny little kitchen. Or Chanel No 5, first given to me by a friend whose dad travelled for work, and was rather well off, so thought nothing of bring back such luxuries for his daughter; she gave me a bottle, saying she already...