If the Lights Grow Dim

Little Brown Dog (and, by the way, if you haven’t read her blogs you are missing a treat) has asked me to reveal the twelve scents and sounds which would still reach me when everything else has failed. They are:

1. Freshly sawn wood. Forever associated with my dad who was a carpenter. If this doesn’t revive me than at least I’ll know Dad’s waiting to show me the way.

2. Talisker. Peat, wood smoke, phenols and memories of a golden October holiday with Tom, Lily and Rose. A few drops of this wee dram wafted under my nose and I’d be a happy woman.

3. Rose and Lily making each other laugh.

4. The warm, clean smell of my husband when he gives me a hug.

5. My mum saying the prayer she used to recite to us before we went to sleep. Not for religious reasons but as a talisman against fear.

6. Crushed basil leaves. We always have a pot by the kitchen window.

7. The smell of autumn mornings – the dying of the year and new terms and new beginnings.

8. John Martyn singing ‘One World’.

9. Putty. That linseedy smell takes me back to when I was little and I ‘helped’ dad who gave me little chunks of putty to warm up in my hands when he was glazing windows.

10. The smell of a brand new, pristine, glossy magazine and the crisp crack of the pages breaking open. Shallow? Moi?

11. Rain on the coach roof of Veryan, our old wooden boat, and feeling snug and secure in the cabin below. A nostalgic memory now as we’ve just sold her.

12. Someone whispering in my ear, ‘Chris! Your book's number one in the best seller list.’ That ought to do it!

Okay. You know who you are. If you haven’t done this exercise yet, stop hiding at the back and do it.

The photograph is of Mwnt, our nearest beach.