Breathe in, chugging along and homely things.

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1. I am walking up to Oli’s to get my morning lift when I suddenly smell something that makes me think ‘Tunbridge Wells.’ You know how smells are -- you can’t remember them when you aren’t smelling them, and you can’t say exactly what they are; but they can stir up such a strong feeling. So... what do you think I could smell? What is the essential Tunbridge Wells fragrance?

2. Walking into the office and feeling very cheerful about it. Travelling is all very well, but for me it isn’t a sustainable lifestyle -- I let it take too much out, and it’s hard work wondering at things all the time. Whereas I can keep up flatlife and worklife and Tunbridge Wells life for a year or two at a time.

3. I keep finding little things that I have not even thought of missing while I was away, but make me feel joyous to pick up again. Today it was a pint of Harvey’s. Oh, and English trees -- palms and sausage trees and marula trees and umbrella trees and acacias are tremendously exotic and atmospheric, but I never stood under one feeling awestruck as I would under an oak or a beech or a yew; and I could never feel the same affection for them that I feel for a hazel or a hawthorn.

Comments

  1. AnonymousTuesday, April 04, 2006

    1. Supergran
    2. Supermarkets
    3. Soup o' the day

    (Accrington)

    ReplyDelete
  2. JoeinVegasWednesday, April 05, 2006

    Home and right in to work again! Was your desk and all the tasks you left behind still there?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousThursday, April 06, 2006

    The woman has a keen nostril.

    Benji

    ReplyDelete
  4. KatieThursday, April 06, 2006

    Was it cwafee from a little cafe? Or pastries and new bread? Some sort of tree smell? Or that musty smell from old plaster and paint on the front of old Victorian villas?

    ReplyDelete

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