I have what we call the Elsden nose… not that my nose is anything remarkable but I have a very sensitive sense of smell. I also have a great smell memory, and I can remember smells… for example, years and years ago, before I was fourteen when we moved from the flat we lived in to our first own house, I was in the big garden at the back with my sister. My dad was a scientist and he went to various conferences and travelled to different places, and once he brought us back something which made bubbles. I don’t mean the soap-bubble things, with a little wand with a hoop that you blew through; no, this was some sort of liquid, maybe rubber, maybe something synthetic, into which you dipped a wand with a hoop of a slightly different shape to the soap-bubble one, and then instead of blowing waved it about quite quickly and a wonderful, more substantial bubble emerged… large, and lovely, and very wobbly and iridescent. I can see it so vividly now, the green of the back lawn, the bricks of the coal bunker, the flower beds…but I can also smell the smell of the bubbles… sort of almondy, sort of bubble-bum, sort of frangipani, a little bit of sharpness… I wish I could actually smell it again to remind myself, but in the meantime, I can remember it!
WRITER
Lois Elsden 
It’s amazing how a particular smell can unlock memories from the past thought forgotten. Your eyes may decieve you but not your nose. I remember as a child I thought old people had a smell different say from my parents. I wonder do I have that smell now. I think I’ll have a sauna at the YMCA today.
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When my children were little they smelled different from each other; my son was sort of almonds and frangipani, my daughter was apricot-rose… so strange isn’t it?
I’m sure when we were young old people didn’t have the washing facilities we have now, and they always seemed to smell of moth-balls and liniment!
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When you see movies of mother seals returning to feed their babies on the rocky shore there are tens even hundreds of them, and to my eyes all look alike. The mothers always seem to find their own young though. It must be their odor that discriminates them. What else?
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The same when you see these huge flocks of penguins… they all look the same in their smart suits
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