As previously stated, I'm very much a city boy at heart. I love the hustle, the bustle, the life, the people, the noise. However, there is one thing, particularly in the city when it's warmer*, that is not always overly pleasant about city life. I'm talking about the near constant assault perpetrated against the olfactory senses by the various niff, pongs, whiffs, smells and stenches that are encountered on a minute by minute basis.
There's that shrubbery in someones garden that seems to have a sweet smell on the surface but is soured by a strong underlying whiff of shit. Next up, it's the underpass that has had so many tramps filling it with their Special Brew-flavoured urine that it has permanent stench of boozy piss. A bit further along the way and there's that walkway up to the station that inexplicably seems to smell really strongly of stale sweat. And, of course, there's the train itself which all-too-explicably smells of stale sweat. That's not counting the various street turds, passing rubbish trucks and food-strewn buses that also give the nostril a swift smellpunch of the way past.
But then... but then... there's the smell of fresh bread and pastries as you walk past the bakery early in the morning. There's that scent of perfume that kicks off a memory of times gone by. Over there, the waft a whole chicken gently roasting on a spit at the deli on the corner. The good smells, the enticing smells, the ones that make you go "mmmm". So maybe it's not all that bad.
Who plants something that smells like shit, though? I mean, seriously. What's that about?
* Not that we've had a huge amount of that this summer. This is England after all and our summers can often consist of three days of blistering heat that we're unprepared for which give us all sun burn followed by weeks of rain that we're then unprepared for as we keep expecting that hot weather to come strolling back in. Ever the dismally pessimistic optimists, eh?
6 comments:
Mmmmm...fresh bread and piss.
It's the smell of London
You should do olfactory tours. It's the next big thing, I'm sure of it.
I'll make you a little hat to keep off the sun, if you like. :)
"Nick's Niff Tours". It could work.
Ta, I'll need that hat to prevent the baldy bonce from burning...
Yep, it's all there to sniff in London, no need to scratch (although, sometimes, after going through an underpass, there's a sort of psychosomatic itch that comes with the smell of filth....)
It's not so much "the city that never sleeps" as "the city that never stops whiffing faintly of urine"
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