Some things stay with you forever...
How true is this?
We all recall some vision or other from our childhood, we all recall an experience, the trip to the sea, the first pair of Levi's, the time you kicked the coffee table over whilst trying to look ultra cool in your friends house, or the time you thought you would just see if the paint really was dry on the front door after your dad had warned you it was still wet, and not to touch it, or else....but how many smells can you recall?
There are two that stay with me forever, and both are at either end of the Jimmy Durante Smell Scale. If the thing that dogs do with canine glee is Ph1, with Grandma's Eau de Cologne at Ph2, with freshly baked bread at Ph13, just edging out Christmas dinner at Ph12 and freshly cut grass at Ph14 (hey, I lived in a land of concrete..), then the two pongs that bring my nosebuds to life are the thoughts of Cole's Boneyard (Ph negative infinity), and Clarks Pasty Shop on a winters morn (ooh ooh, Ph paradise plus)....
Cole's Boneyard grew up not far from the Feeder Canal, the watery artery that opened on May 1st.1809.The opening of the Feeder Canal and Floating Harbour was one of the biggest events in Bristol's history. The whole thing was an unprecedented piece of engineering and cost £600,000, almost £400,000 more than the original estimate. Huge celebratory dinners were laid on to mark the opening, not only for the dignitaries but also for the manual workers. If the boneyard had come first then trust me, the dinners would have had return tickets. Coles dealt with slaughter house waste at a period when public health authorities worked to simpler rules than today.The smell of burning intestines and boiling bones impregnated the clothes and hair of everyone in the vicinity. The smell first hit me in about 1967, I shall never forget the experience, a blast from across the Feeder on a hot summers day. A semi-sweet, partly putrid intense whiff that took over you like a malevolent spirit, a poltergeist of a pong that made you gag and retch uncontrollably..nobody done any washing when Cole's was boiling up, and even on the hottest of summer days you would never find an open window on any house anywhere within a square mile.....the thought still makes me hold my breath.... a few years ago a good friend of mine told me he worked there for two weeks replacing some electrical wiring...he said it really put you off of your sandwiches. Sandwiches?...... I would have worked in a gimp mask attached to an oxygen bottle...phew...
Clark's Pie and Pasty shop by comparison, was heaven! The factory was just a few hundred yards from my school, and as a permanently hungry kid to walk through the smell on an icy winters day was beyond the dreams of mere mortals. Clark's Pasties...even just writing the name makes me want to queue outside the shop to taste the things....I return the shop every few years like a lemming on heat, the shop is still there thankfully, and each and every pasty taste as good as ever...bliss!....I was thinking of buying a few to have them cryogenically frozen, just in case they ever do the unthinkable, and close those heavenly doors for ever...shudders down my spine at the thought.
Clark's Pies and Pasties, you may ask, but you can buy them anywhere.Don't be fooled.I've tried them, and whilst they are reasonable, they are nowhere, nowhere,nowhere near the freshly baked thing. The difference between a fresh rose and a plastic one, and that's an understatement.
Perhaps I'm getting old....
Perhaps I need to get back to the shop....
Wondering if pasties can return to spawn....
Wondering if I could perhaps buy one and keep it like a hamster?
The smell of childhood....if only I could find a good photographer to take me back to a cold winter's morn outside the site of heaven.....
Pasty anyone?
