Open Writing

I remember so many things by smell - the good as well as some that are less enjoyable!

A village shop that I knew well in my childhood was a prime example. It was in a big black barn (well, to an eight-year-old it looked big, anyway) approached by stone steps, and the first thing I noticed when I got inside, and am never likely to forget, was the amazing mixture of aromas: the fatty smell of butter on the marble slab, bacon hanging from a hook at eye-level, jute fibre sacks of dried beans, peas and other commodities on the floor in front of the counter, open boxes of freshly-picked apples, lamp oil dispensed from a drum, moth-balls, the rich smell of new leather from boots and riding tack . . . that shop sold just about everything the villagers were likely to need, including cotton and 'artificial silk' dresses for the ladies and flannel shirts and corduroy trousers for the men. The next nearest shop was in the town three miles away, and as so few people owned cars and the bus only called one day a week, it was truly a 'convenience store' long before the term was invented.

I remember standing, fascinated, watching the two old ladies who ran the shop as they carved off chunks of butter of approximately the right size, adding or removing small slivers until the scales showed the correct weight, then patting it into shape with small wooden 'butter-pats' which they kept in a bowl of water to prevent the butter sticking to them, before wrapping it in greaseproof paper, formed into the rectangular shape and size recognizable as half-a-pound of butter.

Cheese was cut with a wire as required, (exactly as it is today, so some things haven't changed), and sugar was weighed out from the sack and wrapped in a sheet of blue paper, still called 'sugar paper' today by art and craft enthusiasts, which they rolled into a cone shape. There was no smell from the sugar of course, but I do remember the glorious caramel aroma that issued from my grandmother's kitchen at jam-making time.

I often think back to those days now, especially when I see discarded paper, cardboard and plastic wrappings, whether dumped in the street or properly disposed of at refuse tips, and think, "What a waste". In the times that I remember, every piece of wrapping was saved and re-used; even the paper in which the butter was wrapped was used to grease cake-tins - and that brings to mind another delicious smell, that of home baking. The results were so much better than the factory-made cakes served up today in a moulded plastic tray inside a cardboard box, vacuum-sealed to make it difficult to open with the bare hands.

Supermarkets just don't have the same appeal, and don't smell the same as that long-gone black barn.

Y'know, I think I must be getting a bit nostalgic . . . or just old!