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Smells Absolutely Delicious!
As some have unkindly remarked, I have a proboscis of ample proportions. Despite the fact that, in the latter stages of the Second World War, an elderly acquaintance lost control of my pushchair on a hill, causing me to run, nose first, into an inconsiderately placed tree, it has functioned rather well all my life. Memories, for me, are olfactory.
Not long after I started shaving I was wildly infatuated with a girl whose hair lacquer smelt enchantingly like Daz. She did not return my affections, which is a good thing because that kind of washing powder brings me out in a rash. So did the Old Spice which I, unsuccessfully, used to try to lure her. Hospitals always had lingering traces of iodoform about them. No more, now all that permeates the corridors are dinners and bodily functions. I can still recall the unmistakable whiff of cordite, which I associate with the acrid stench of singeing eyebrows, the same as when I blew too hard into the thurible to reignite the charcoal and set my beard on fire. Churches which use incense have an air of a holiness which is, sadly, missing in many places. Schools, since I was reluctantly introduced to them in the late nineteen forties, always have that faint hint of damp children, but not quite as strong as Lily, who I sat next to when I was in the infants, who was as far from the flower of the same name that it is possible to be. The bane of my life are people with dogs, to which I have no objection, who try to mask the presence of their pets with aerosol air fresheners, which trigger an attack of asthma in me.
This time of the year has its own signature; gas lights and apples. October is the time of Harvest Thanksgivings. In the country parish churches in days of yore the mantles glowed and the gas hissed. In the flickering light the rosy apples stood on every window ledge, giving off the kind of perfume which those in the modern supermarkets, a long way from their country of origin, never do. Perhaps, when we collect tins and packets of food to sustain the poor of our town through the long winter, we miss out on the autumn windfalls. The important thing is to thank God for all his benefits and to share our abundance with those who desperately need it.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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