Childhood smells: coughs and sneezes

The school Christmas holidays always seemed to start with diseases for me, pyjamas on the sofa, and in my mother's bathroom cabinet what was 'Vick's vapour rub' has a mentholated smell redolent of the preparations for the festive season.

Smells of childhood 3: coming home for Christmas

The last pungent memory I discussed was the one I associated with my Gran, it seems pertinent now to discuss the next most important smell I associate with someone in my life. Just before one Christmas in the 1970s I sat on the stairs with my mother and sister, by the telephone, waiting for news of my father who had been on business trip to Prague. Prague airport was closed and he, and a colleague, wanting to be home at Christmas had hired a car and were driving to Vienna to get a flight back. He came home with his usual gift for my mother, a bottle of what he always called 'Channel No5'. My mother likes other fragrances and I know when she wears Arpege or Coco, but the only way she should really smell is of Chanel No5. then I can be calm and know that when she hugs me I am safe.

Smells of childhood 2: My Gran

This is a memory of another soap but I only realised it was the smell of a soap when I moved into my house 10 years ago. Our house had been a C19 general store and in the old stable at the end of the garden we found a crate of Sunlight soap. One whiff and I was transported back to my great grandmother's house. This was my Gran's smell: she washed with it, scrubbed with it and swore it was the best thing for washing underwear.First made in 1884 it was a naturally-derived soap and now only made in Canada, although celebrated at Port Sunlight:

http://www.portsunlightvillage.com/

For me it conjours up one of the beloved figures of my life: her wicked smile, the floral dresses my mother regularly made her - always from the same pattern, the hydrangeas and gladioli she grew in her garden, her budgie, seed cake and the way her hearing-aid whistled when she turned it off.

Smells of childhood 1: coal tar

A programme I caught part of on Radio 4 mentioned the smell of coal tar and its use on Izal toilet paper as the ingredient that made it medicated. I remember the toilet paper well, see:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/minor-british-institutions-izal-toilet-paper-1727294.html

But it's the smell of tar freshly laid on roads that I remember from my childhood and I love it. I can pick up a bar of Wright's coal tar soap in the supermarket and inhale the pungent image of cleanliness, whilst the black tar itself squigged and oozed in the sun.