Alison Healy: On fragrant flashbacks and smelly memories

We all have those fragrant flashbacks, when a smell immediately takes you back to a specific time and place. I cannot smell lilies without getting a feeling of abject terror, coupled with a crippling exhaustion.

We received many bouquets after our first child was born and they all contained lilies. The baby’s incessant crying sent us spiralling into a vortex of despair and now, almost 20 years later, the mere sniff of a lily strikes a stone-cold fear into my heart.

Do some counties smell nicer than others? And should we be preserving particular smells before they disappear forever?

The scent of floor polish brings me back further, to primary school. The nuns occasionally sent us on errands to the nearby convent and as we stood waiting in the porch, our senses were assailed by the scent of floor polish and the comforting baking smells wafting from the kitchen. We were never lucky enough to catch sight of a nun without her veil, but we lived in hope. The nuns no longer live in the convent and the smells have disappeared with them. But how many other smells have we lost, without even realising it?

In some countries, there are moves afoot to preserve these smells before they become extinct. Cecilia Bembibre of University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage has spent the last few years working on techniques to recreate extinct scents and to save some odours for future generations.

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Old books, leather gloves and wax polishes are among the smells she has been researching. In the Netherlands, historian Dr Caro Verbeek has recreated smells from important moments in history. They include the smell of the locker room used by her country’s soccer team when they won the UEFA Championship in 1988. Nose witnesses described smells such as grass, leather, dirty clothes, a coconut oil used by Ruud Gullit, Badedas shower gel, smelly feet and, of course, champagne. In short, the sweet smell of victory.

She has also recreated the smell from Napoleon’s retreat at the Battle of Waterloo. The scent is a mixture of horses, gunpowder, wet earth, leather and anxiety sweat. Apparently normal sweat and anxiety sweat have different smells, but you probably knew that already. The scent is overlaid with a perfume Napoleon wore, containing rosemary, bergamot and bitter orange. He must have been one of the world’s most fragrant-smelling leaders as he went through litres of the stuff and carried a bottle of it in his boot.

The nightclubs of the 80s had all that, as well as the smell of fried chicken from the mandatory supper, and a faint whiff of desperation

Smelly towns, rather than fragrant leaders, are of interest to British lecturer and designer Dr Kate McLean. She has led “smell walks” around cities and makes maps of the various smells so that future generations will know what their town once smelled like.

It makes you wonder what sort of a smell map Ireland would produce? Do some counties smell nicer than others? And should we be preserving particular smells before they disappear forever? An open turf fire would have to be high on the list of smells worth saving. Mothballs in your granny’s wardrobe should feature. The enticing aroma of a full Irish breakfast with top notes of brown sauce and butter melting into toast is a must for preservation.

The full Irish isn’t in danger of becoming extinct, but pipe smoke is in a more precarious position. We have already lost that intense antiseptic smell that hospitals had in the past, a smell that lingered on your clothes long after you had left the building. And of course, we must not forget the smell of an Irish pub, pre-the smoking ban. Remember that heady mix of smoke, porter, sticky carpet and the fumes of disinfectant when the toilet door opened?

The nightclubs of the 80s had all that, as well as the smell of fried chicken from the mandatory supper, and a faint whiff of desperation, depending on the time of night. It would be good to recreate the smell of a small part of Dublin’s O’Connell Street circa 1990. It was a combination of Dublin Bus fumes mingling with the hot sugary smell coming from the doughnut kiosk, topped with the general whiff of danger you get from being in the big smoke when you’re up from the country for the day.

Some frustrated home workers may be growing nostalgic for the smell of the city streets and the whiff of a stranger’s deodorant when your nose is jammed into their armpit during rush hour on the train. Fear not. That olfactory treat will still be there when the nation’s workers return to the commute.

In the meantime, perhaps we need to appoint a scent czar to preserve the most authentic Irish smells before they are lost forever. I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at that job.