I have this large lump of amber, bought some years ago from somewhere/someone I cannot remember. Amber is my favourite incense, but it would be sacrilege to burn so large a piece. There's a thought - the Anglican High Church committing sacrilege at each mass. Excuse me vicar - your handbag's on fire.
I miss the smell of someone else's cigars. Cigars were the first smokable things to be banned, and restaurants were the first places to ban them. Lingering cigar smoke brings back childhood memories of Christmas and - like roasting coffee - London. I love the scent of a room in which an uncle has smoked a fat cigar the previous evening. The Van Dyke browning of the family portraits is a small price to pay to a child.
There is a cosy pub near here called The Star. It had a ceiling which looked exactly like the inverted surface of a well made Creme Caramel. 100 years of cigars, pipes and cigarettes had produced such a special and subtle finish that they tried - and failed - to reproduce it during cleaning and redecoration following the smoking ban. Scents and aromas are not the only things I miss.
There is an unhealthy trend to shame anyone whose kitchen doesn't look like the waiting room of an expensive private clinic these days. The latest plague doesn't help either. Now it is acceptable to publicly shame them.
My ideal kitchen would be the sort which museums mock-up to show what life was like in the 17th century, when one plague followed another and sanitisation was effected by a real fire of catastrophic proportions. Call me old-fashioned.
One of the H.V. Morton books I bought recently has the title, 'Ghosts of London'. In it he describes London traditions and eccentric shops which he remembers as a boy, but had disappeared by 1939 when he wrote it.
There was an apothecary run by an elderly man who carefully weighed bundles of herbs and powders and a Georgian shop which sold nothing but snuff. I remember visiting a dark and dingy, wooden-clad shop run by two old men who spent all day grinding oil paints for artists. That was only about 30 years ago.
Diagon Alley really existed in the back streets of London.
Ahh yes .... evocative aromas .... one of my uncles had a pub and I remember going in there as a child .... I can smell that smell now of beer and oak barrels and cigarette smoke. Another one I loved was the smell in hardware shops. Until recently, there was a bow windowed old sweet shop here run by two old men .... that had a sickly sweet smell all of its own ! Also, the old grocers shops .... tiled walls, bacon slicers, butter pats & sugar in blue bags , coffee grinders and all the smells would mingle together. XXXX
ReplyDeleteFlorists are still good.
DeleteI love the smell of pipe smoke. Does anyone smoke a pipe these days? It comes from daily watching a favourite uncle going through the tapping to empty,prod around, refill and puff routine. I would have been around 5.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't mind my very out-of-date kitchen, but I would like more worktop space!
I know of one old man who sits outside our supermarket and smokes a pipe, but I haven't seen him for a while. It's either Covid, old age or lung cancer.
DeleteOk... you’re old fashioned...
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteI am not fond of fitted kitchens. I prefer free-standing cupboards that all look different. But I haven't got that here but I did have in my previous house and I put it together as I wanted it. It had a bit of everything. I don't particularly like my kitchen but it functions and I can't see any reason to rip it out just because I don't like it. I don't like cigar smells.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to rip out your kitchen or like cigar smells just because of someone else's preferences. That's the point of this blog really.
DeleteIt’d be a weird world if we all liked the same things
ReplyDeleteThe smell of cigars reminds me of time spent in Germany as a child in the 1950s
Many of the ‘recreated villages of years gone by’ have an apothecary complete with large glass containers and old fashioned balance scales
A world like the Stepford Wives. I imagine the Germans were keener on cigars than the Brits.
DeleteMy oldest memory is cherry blend pipe smoke. That was my grandfather, who died when I was a year and a half old. Then my favorite uncle, and his cigars. My father smoking his pipe in the car, not cigarettes. Better for the children. Of course I smoked, from age eighteen to twelve years ago. I almost never miss smoking, but the odd time I smell a pipe or a cigar, I remember. I cannot remember the last time there was cherry blend.
ReplyDeleteI gifted my daughter beautiful antique amber jewelry. I wonder what became of it.
Antique amber jewelry sell for a lot of money these days.
DeleteMy father smoked a pipe, and the whole ritual of filling it and cleaning it out is something I remember as a constant of my youth. He quit smoking and quit drinking. Looking back on it, it must have taken incredible will power. Cigar smell reminds me of my uncle with the glass eye. -Jenn
ReplyDeleteThe pipe ritual. My father would smoke 1 cigar at Christmas.
DeleteOh yes, the gentrification of anything shabby. I love old things - I'm married to a 63 year old after all! I detest with a passion this new apartment we are stuck in until February and am toying with whether to risk moving back to a place up stairs with my bad knee to consider, or to rent an old cottage somewhere instead. WE found a fantastic 4 bedroom posh house in a posh suburb, the kind where embassies tend to sprout up, for half the usual rent, we think it is because with four bedrooms it only has one bathroom and the idea of sharing a house with other adults and only one bathroom does my head in. Imagine the morning crush! I love our place in an 1896 steam laundry, but sadly living in a shaky city the unreinforced brick terrifies me so much I'm rethinking. I wish I lived in an old place with old land like the UK, only with our PM and sensible politics. Sigh
ReplyDeleteI have always liked living in interesting places, the older the better. We could do a swap for politics, but that might be too extreme for us.
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