They Say the Sense of Smell is the Last to Leave Us

So, I'm walking along the long, shiny, wide corridors of commerce - the local shopping mall - behind a couple probably about the same age as me. Both the same height, both ostensibly brunet and probably husband and wife, rather than siblings.

I noticed a faint whiff of hairspray from them, but nothing else. No smell to say that here walks a human being. Just nothing at all. Except that one gagging breath of hairspray.

But that's how we're all becoming, no? Overly scented sprays and potions for the body are giving way to unscented 'natural' (hah!) or simply odour-free varieties. So that, in the end, having killed all known bodily bacteria dead, dead dead, we can feel safe in the knowledge that nothing of our emotions or physical state is given away to the passing stranger. Or, for that matter, to the intimate lover.

While our houses reek of plug-in air sanitisers in fake floral or laughable 'fresh ocean' scents. Kill that smell. We'd be embarrassed should someone realise that we are living, perspiring, eliminating animals. We should be scentless, sterile, safe.

Give me a bloody break.

Meanwhile, back at the home which smells delightfully of dogs and humans, humus and compost, green growing things and fleshly dying things - I have been in conversation with my bike.

The delightful old lady tells me her name, and from that moment on, my body and brain remember how to ride a bike.

We're going to get along famously, she and I. For she knows my name, now, too.

See top of the page for a clue.