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Smells Of The Past

Sunday dinner time, with the smell of roasting lamb & mint, and the smell as dad laid a fire, music on the BBC radio, and the sound of church bells in the back ground, and mom maybe humming in the kitchen all very evocative of my early childhood in Edgbaston.
paul
 
ahh paul...on the astonbrook through aston manor site i wrote about the same things living in nans back to back house..the smell of the sunday dinner cooking and the archers on the radio..also lavender polish as the house was always given a good bottoming (as it was called) on sunday mornings....happy days and memories that never fade with time..
lyn
 
I love this thread and so many of the same memories of scents for me. I remember the smell in Hiron's Fruit Shop on Stockland Green which was full of sacks of all sorts of things... a very earthy smell. I also liked the smell in Wilkins Chemist on the Green... a perfume smell mixed with things like cough syrup. Baines' bakery was also a great place for comforting smells years ago. Fresh bread and cakes smell wonderful. Roast lamb on Sunday lunch time was my favourite and I loved the sounds and smell of Dad finely chopping the fresh mint on his homeade chopping board. He also used to chop parsley for when we had a fish meal. Lovely memories of that also. One other one...the smell of Bath salts going into the bath water.
 
Ooooooh stuffing - sage and onion - Sunday lunch or Christmas lunch. A wonderful homely smell. My kids love the taste and smell too for the same reason. Viv.
 
Oh,the smell of Stocktons pie shop in Greenway Street.Small Heath.Pies,meat or apple still great smells.
 
Now we can't talk about tantilising smells without including the aroma from fish and chip shops can we! And if its fish and chips at the seaside, even better. Vuv
 
Many things may dim as we age Lyn, but if as it seems we were very fortunate to have a happy and contented (if poor) by to-days standards, childhood, then these memories remain to the very last as bright and real as if new. Some one commented on Christmas and I had forgotten, cigar smell only at Christmas in our house but very tangible, as of course sage and onion stuffing. A little ditty I half remember from my childhood. Thinking of your laughter dad,
Remembering Childhood fears,
Wishing you were here dad,
Following in your foot steps dad,
As the days turn into years.
Paul
 
Yes Paul, I found cigar smoke quite hypnotic. Mum's face powder (Max Factor - I think) is also a potent smell for me. Sometimes I catch a whiff of it even now, but have difficulty describing it. To me it's simply mum's face powder. A lovely delicate smell. Viv.
 
Nico, I still have a bottle of Devon Violets in my drawer, love the smell of it, but its really hard to get now!!
Also 4711 which one of my aunts wore and Quelques fleures, which my great aunt wore.
My nans house with the smell of material, especially cotton in the summer when she and mom made dresses and my grandads Woodbines!
Johnsons baby talc and lotion too, doesn't smell the same nowadays.
Friars balsam inhalations and gypsum powder from work, when I was a student.
Sue
 
I am smelling it now. Nan had a round flat opaque white bottle of it with a sprig of violets painted on.My 4/7/11 Aunty lived in a Georgian basement, her cupboards smelled musty and the old fashioned games she gave me smelled of that. Spillicans, Merills, ladies dominoes and playing cards, tiny ones, Bezique and an old sort of satchel full of old pencils and this long wire thing with tiny cubes on it in orange white and black with numbers and x's on, you twirled the cubes, I think it was for doing you own perm did they call it? Dad had domino cards in French I gave them to a relative who collects cards. They all had this smell, and a tiny velvet box will the velvet worn off holding mum's play money with tiny enamelled playing cards on the top. A special smell. Quelques fleurs souns nice.
 
A couple of years ago I was near a horse that was being shoed. The smell of the hot iron being held to the hoof took me back to my earliest childhood when I was allowed to peep in at the blacksmith, in the smithy at the top of Druids lane, at the Maypole.

When I was a kid everybody seemed to smell of mothballs !
 
Dad didn,t have much hair but as a child he used Imperial Leather Brillientine in an oval tin i loved the smell. Also the smell of the rubber from hot water bottles.
 
The smell of freshly baked cakes when I came in form school. My Mom was prolific at baking everyone loved her cakes.
 
Lovely Wendy . Reminds me of the smell of Bread Pudding when we came from school and could smell it wafting down the entry. Couldn,t wait to get in. Then before the tin was washed scraping it for all the burnt bits round the edge.
 
Hate bread pudding and the burnt bits. Loved Nan's baked suet pudding which was more like a cake in texture and bread butter pudding. She liked the burned bits and the top of the rice pudding and the Yorkshire.
At my first job I was lost for what to do at lunch time, found this old shop in Cov. Lady said she had been making bread pudding before the war, tasted like it was from the war, chucked it, it hit a door and bounced off.
 
I liked the smell of the pet shop Jenny. Little chickens in shavings. Cheep! cheep! The material smell from Arthur Hammon's menswear in Cov. the tailor's chalk and the fabrics. The whole shop was done out in proper timber inside and the shirts were in crisp celophane in glass fronted cabinets. His mature assistant was the lovely Miss Middleton, I used to take her ad copy. Greens curtain shop, massive bales? of material, they cut it on a guillotene. Went to Ikea had to cut it myself watched by this jobsworth, made a right pigs ear of it but as he couldn't measure for toffees I got half a length more for 'note' as dad would say. ote meant anything.
 
keegs said:
The smell of opening a new annual on Christmas morning.Can't get that with a Kindle !
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Oh yes Keegs. The anticipation. The pine needles smell from the tree mixed up with the wrapping paper. Selection boxes and tubes. Even the baubles or their box had a smell, the radio on. Roast chicken which was a treat then. The 3 grans and grandad over for tea, plus some lonely folk mum invited, sitting with our paper hats on, we still do. But its not the same though I pretend it is, for the others.
 
Not living in Brum now my mind sometimes drifts back to the days I lived there. People may think that its images that spring to mind or pubs and clubs that you used. Maybe this is the case for some people but for me its the smell of suds oil as you walked past factories or when my father came home from work. Other smells are chocolate on a hot day from cadburys or the amazing smell of ansells and HP if only I could have bottled them
 
boro keith said:
Not living in Brum now my mind sometimes drifts back to the days I lived there. People may think that its images that spring to mind or pubs and clubs that you used. Maybe this is the case for some people but for me its the smell of suds oil as you walked past factories or when my father came home from work. Other smells are chocolate on a hot day from cadburys or the amazing smell of ansells and HP if only I could have bottled them
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I used to reek of suds oil for about twelve years of my life but people thought the smell was from a Hospital:soap:.
 
Like you Boro Keith, chocolate, Ansells and HP sauce are the evocative smells for me, worked at Cadburys to get extra cash, and my journey home was past the other 2. The old fashioned hospital smell too always takes me back to my training days at Selly Oak, and some of the lotions we used to use there.
Sue
 
The smell of Sawdust used to make me retch as the caretaker used to come and spread it about when someone got sick at school. The dinner room smelled of stale food we sometimes had lessons in there, I hated it. The artroom smelt of clay and powder paint. I loved the smell of the nature table. In the afternoons Nan would say well arm gooin up to change me. She would come down smelling of linen and subtle flowers. When I asked what it was she would say oh just me squirt or me ookem floofem.
Mum would say I am going uo to change me...for a bottle of Guinness. As kids we would play on the public street toilets they only had ones for men I don't know what ladies did then) we tap danced on the glass cobbles till we got told off. The smell would waft up, not un unpleasant, more carbolicy. Also the smell of the Fish and chip shop or the pub. And the bakery on a Sunday afternoon wafting over the allotments. My grandad smelled of suds and dad of raw tobbacco.
 
I can remember the smells from the onion fair and the steam that drifted across from the trains that passed by there on their way to Witton. Wonderful days. The one I hated was when we visited Nechells you could smell gas. I always felt sorry for people living close by. Jean.
 
Yes, I do remember the Onion Fair and the sulphurous smell of the steam trains, but what really sticks in my mind is the wonderful aroma of the first Indian restaurants around The Horsefair and Bristol Street. Not only delicious, but also romantic, and I've remained hooked on Asian food ever since.

G
 
It's funny as we had an Indian gentleman married to an Irish lady move in next door and I hated the smell of their food when it appeared to seep through our walls. Oh how wrong was I. I love both the smell and taste now. By the way they were the loveliest neighbors we could have wished for.
 
When I worked at the Hi-Ton in Sheepcote Street,(1960s) I reeked of "suds oil and cutting oil". On the number 10 or 3 bus home to Quinton me and my pals would stand or sit on the luggage bit on the bus so as not to offend any other passengers,
jimbo
 
The smell from the factory in Wellhead Lane was vile. My aunt worked there and smelled of it when she came home. Oh what was the name of the place???.
 
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