Fragrances and memory: London

I've been enjoying my morning walks this week. The weather is a bit cooler, and the morning air has a hint of fall in it. I like to listen to music when I walk, but I also like to go without the ipod on some days and just t-h-i-n-k. Crazy, I know, but sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode because of all of the noises battling to get inside. It's nice to occasionally just breathe, in...out... and not have SOUND pumping furiously into my ears via those clever little earbuds.

This morning was a music-free walk. There was a dampness to the air this morning, and just a bit of coolness. I could smell the moisture, and then I could smell the exhaust from the school busses, and I was instantly inside of a memory. A memory of my time in London as a college student.

London has a smell to it. It is rain and diesel fuel, perfume and body odor. It is musty air rushing up at you as you enter the tube stations combined with the smell of roasted chestnuts being sold in aluminum foil packets on the street corner by Cockneyed-accented Londoners. It is the smell of vinegar and salt on the freshest fish and chips wrapped in the London Times. London is the damp odor of wet wool. I cannot remember a single thing about my time in London without also remembering the scents.

We lived in The New Atlantic Hotel for the semester, my little group of coeds and me. The hotel was a winding, twisting, layered concoction of several floors with dozens of staircases that often went nowhere. We were not the only college students inhabiting that hotel, but we were the only ones who didn't openly smoke pot in the hallways. I've never smoked a joint, but I know the sickly sweet smell of pot, and it is London to me.

One of my favorite places in London was Hyde Park, which smells like water, duck poop, and fresh air (always tinged with that scent of diesel exhaust). I'm a small town girl, raised closer to the country than to town, and London occassionally imprisoned me. When that happened, I'd escape to Hyde Park and read, study, and people watch. A piece of soft grass, an old towel to sit on, trees, water, books, and crazy people. There's no better show, no better venue.

London smelled more exciting at night. When the temperature began to drop, the crispness of the air seemed to bring out the scent of cologne on the necks of handsome men. It made the smell of a theatre seem more cultured. It even turned the scent of the tube into excitement. During the day the tube smelled like the people who rode the underground train to work: toast and jam, Earl Gray tea with cream, soap, morning breath. At night, the tube smelled like the people who rode it to play: beer, strong perfume, vomit, popcorn, and something I can only label as Excitement.

I can remember the sight of snowflakes falling on me from a night-darkened sky while I walked back to the hotel after a long day. They were the first snowflakes I'd seen in London, and they were important because it was December and almost time to go back home. Home to Oklahoma, home to Harding in Searcy. The smell of the air that night with the cold scent of snow made me sad. Sad to leave, but also sad because the snow smelled like home...and I missed home.

The fragrance of home, of childhood. Hmmm, maybe next post.

Fragrances and memories. They are all wrapped up together, aren't they?