Scent

The scent of what? Of how my memories grow; the scent of spring and summer, yes that is what I can see when I breathe in.

I hear the lap of waves on the concrete steps of the harbour wall; that solid gloopy glug, glug, glug, where the green water rides up the concrete and breaks apart into white foam droplets and then subsides to the mirror of the water and the sparkle of the sun and the scent of the sea which I cannot yet describe but makes me think of the oystercatchers flying over head. The plaintive bleat; the wail it almost seems, of the curlews and the high pitched piping of those birds that run along the sea shore.

Yes, as I listen to the seabirds and look out at the seagulls bobbing silently offshore, I can smell seaweed, feel the slip of bladder wrack under my feet and the crunch of razor shells as I walk over them. I can smell the sand which sometimes has that slapped wet smell; that watery smell with a wee bit of ooze in it and which sometimes has the smell; when it is dry, of the desert and of heat and parched bones and dust that cakes around your nose.

Then, where the salt marsh begins; is the rich smell, the smell of mud and rot and something at once both cloying and thrilling, taking me back to childhood and sliding on shiny mudbanks in Devon; wandering along dark creeks in Norfolk where the yachts lean at crazy angles and old wrecks sit in the mud with crabs and old ropes tangled in the weed encrusted, barnacle clad, planks.

This is summer just because this is summer; this is walks with the dog along a hundred different beaches. This is walking with my 40 year old sister when she was five; swinging her by the hands we held out to her. It is lying by the cliffs with sandy sandwiches and walking with fear in our hearts for the sweeping tide to catch us up.

In winter there was a different smell, though I do not know what that might have been; rotting fishes, the heaviness of snow showers on the sea, the hiss of hurricane lamps by the fishing lines. The scent of loneliness and silent evenings.

But today in the late spring, when yesterday, I smelt a lilac tree and thought of my old garden, and when I watched the ducklings flicking here and there on the river by its wee banks of pebbles. When I smelt the fish shop across the road and the scent of the Indian cooking in the Al Raj and listened to the holiday maker talking of timeshares for the caravans; I paused and thought I must wake up earlier to see the morning sun on the seaswept beach and I must go down to the harbour where the dolphins play and sit there and listen to music and muse on the silver sea and summers to come and springs to leave behind and winters to face.

Winters to face, but different ones. I imagine I can smell burning wood on the fire. I can even hear chestnuts bursting and your children bouncing like puppies in the background. Those sort of winters would suit my fine when I sit inside and the leaves stick to the windows flung there by the wind and the rain and I lean back and yawn in the warmth and breathe your name into the net of your hair.