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:
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.
