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Q3 Please describe the scent, taste or feel of home.
Home is a riot of unruly smells. God knows where they all come from (no really, some of them *are* mysterious). No point in trying to mask them. Just let some fresh air in once in a while.
Christine Wilks , Leeds, UK
It's the taste of rain through the open window, when it's warm in the room because of the warmth of your granny and buns being almost ready in the oven. It's the taste of pine wood in a samovar.
Luda Sokolova , Tula
In Mexico once my brother gave me a strange brown fruit which he claimed tasted like nothing else on earth. I think he called it a Shoe Fruit. I tasted it. "Don't you remember?" I said. "These grew on the trees outside our bungalow in Malaya." He thought for a while "Proust," he said "Eat your heart out."
James Sutherland-Smith , Belgrade and other places
Home smells intensively only when you come back after being away for a long time.
Otherwise, you don't notice much of smell at your home - it's in your blood and blood can't help you to taste the smell
Marina Felsher , St. Petersburg
For most people home is feeling of pease inside or sence of safety regardless of geographical location.
Thinking of my childhood I remember sunny days and smell of burnt grass and expectation that celebration can start any time.
I was touched when one said -the home is wherever the toothbrush is - quite familiar and reminding of what I often feel.Comfortable while walking crowded streets and pretending stranger with the only difference that a kind of celebration already goes on. The fact logically insisting that probably I've grown up.
Nino Korinteli , Georgia
Home, sweet home.....Imagine early Saturday morning, your family is yet asleep, but you are already awake...You have this pleasant feeling of a weekend - two days fully to yourself and your family...But don't forget that everyone is asleep yet...and you have a couple of hours (!!!) fully to yourself....A rear luck, isn't it? The most precious time of all week !!!(for me at least) You do not have to rush anywhere, you do not have to answer the phone, you do not need to cook...And it is when you can stay in bed and read a book, or dream about something nice... And then your family wakes up and you have nice delicious breaksfast tea and sandwiches, and plan your weekend and then you go out shopping or walking or sometimes stay in and watch TV, I can even do some cross-stitching while others are surfing the net or relaxing on a sofa...And in the evening you have a nice meal and a glass of good red wine and your are relaxed and comfortable...Oh, what a wonderful feeling it is to be at home....
Tanya , Moscow
The smell of bread from the bakehouse oven - and of wet dog from the yellow labrador slumped in the old armchair near the kitchen door.
Susan ,
The smell of onions keeping out the cold - my grandmother thought cutting an onion in half would draw the germs out of the atmosphere…..
And cutting an onion in half gets rid of the smell of paint - we had to drink hot milk with raw onion in as a cure for the flu -- sharp pungent smell of mothballs in my grandmother's underwear drawer -- my Italian brother in law convinced us raw onion was a cure for baldness by rubbing on the bald patch…
Writing Together Group , Manchester
The best smell of home was after dawn on Sunday mornings during the fishing season in Southland, New Zealand which woke me before any sound or light could. It was the smell of Dad's early catch of brown or rainbow trout bursting from the scaly skin as the butter in the frying pan reached boiling point. This only took a few precious minutes of cooking time for my dear father while the delicate flesh turned a soft pink colour. Ready to serve from the pan, he didn't need to call my name to wake me. I was there beside him holding my empty plate trusting he would serve the first trout - steaming, bubbling butter, with that interesting skin which I would leave on the edge of the plate until last to run slowly through my teeth. That was a trick which gave me the taste of butter while I still had the last feeling and smell of clean river trout in my very happy mouth.
I could face anything after that Sunday breakfast experience - even the worn tired sermon at church I had yet to make contact with at 9.00 am. As always.
Barbara Hunter , Copacabana, NSW, AUSTRALIA
It's what you smell when you wake. It's you.
Ricky Swarvez ,
The Feel of Home
There are many exotic places,
That I would sometimes like to be.
And there are many interesting faces,
That I think I’d like someday to see.
Perhaps a tour of the Emerald Isle,
Or possibly, cruise the deep blue sea.
But mainly just to see a friendly smile,that is directed warmly at me.
But none is I think ever so nice,
wherever I may find to roam,
that has the heady,scented, spice
and joyful warmth of home.
A next door neighbor of old,
Or a friend acquired anew.
They seem like such a familiar mold,
People that I’m very glad I knew.
For there is something on the street,
where I happily now reside.
It is at times a rhythmic beat,
as regular as the evening tide.
I feel the ebb and flow of years,
as many neighbors come and go.
And I share with them hopes and fears,
as we draw comfort in each other’s glow.
And many,many years from now,
I hope they will say to me.
It seems a pleasant way some how,
That what we are, came so easily to be.
-Joseph Xavier Martin
Joseph Martin , Amherst, NY-USA
My house is empty, as I will soon be leaving it. I live alone with the few remaining pieces of furniture that haven’t been taken away.
In the morning I feel the cold water splashing on my hand as I fill the kettle from the sink in the bathroom. Smell the steam as it boils beside my bed, while I water my Pitcher Plants and my Cape Sundew. Go downstairs and get the coffee out of the freezer. I wouldn’t drink it if the grounds didn’t smell so good, as I remove the foil bag from the side compartment. It’s right up there with the aroma of freshly baked bread.
The bathroom smells of deodorant. Once a month, when I do my drinking, it smells of vomit partially concealed by air freshener and the chemical, hospital, smell of toilet cleaner.
I do my sit-ups in the lounge. The long, coarse, brown fibres of the carpet leave red marks on my back.
I am always banging my head, bashing my elbows on things or catching my feet on door frames. I am so clumsy. This house hurts me at least once a day.
I eat a bowl of Cheerios at the kitchen counter. They taste vaguely of sugar. The kitchen smells of bananas. I have to eat the haddock in the fridge before it pollutes everything else. The dustmen don’t come until Friday and the polystyrene container will stink out the bin in the utility room.
The big sofa in the lounge has an unpleasant velvety texture. This house doesn’t feel like a home. It is an empty shell. There are no voices. I listen to music on a pair of headphones. I don’t talk to myself. The phone is unplugged. This house has the ambience of something that has been dead for a long time.
Pick my hand weights up off the floor of the lounge and feel the cold hard metal warm against my skin as I begin to lift them.
Beyond the patio doors, the back garden smells of damp and decay. The swimming pool with its torn lining is 1 quarter full of stagnant green water surrounding the little turquoise islands where the lining has been pushed up off the floor by the water underneath it.
Sometimes if I go for a walk before dawn, I can smell the sea from the Thames estuary I can tell whether the tide is in or out by the smell. The air is tighter at that time. Everything seems to be in sharper focus. Just around the corner, where my parents live, the vapour from the estuary blows up Walton Road and collects in beads of salt water on their front door. You can taste it in the air.
At my house the loudest sound is the Chubb key as I turn it in the lock, followed by the drone of the burglar alarm. Why do I still put it on?
Make a hot chocolate in the old analogue microwave. Eat marshmallows out of the packet, while I wait for the sharp ping of the bell. Feel the tips of my hair irritating my forehead, just above my eyes. Why won’t it fall out, like my dad’s. I want to be naturally bald and dignified. If I could find my scissors I’d cut it
Jonathan Kepple , NFA
Smells can change:
Home has a familar smell and taste, hard to describe only that it is different from any other home. It wraps around your body, you know the taste of it, sometimes it is sour from an argument and all you want to do is change it or move away from it, try another smell, taste next door or your best friend's partcular smell. Then things change and the house is filled with you and the others that share the space. You buy a candle and fill the house with love.
Tina Rothbury , Australia
Something someone else prepared. I have no control over the taste. Oh and cocktail frankfurts eaten with a small fork, dipped in tomato sauce.
Simone Veenstra , Amsterdam, NL
Home tastes like a block of milk chocolate. Creamy sweetness that fills you, but makes you want to have more. Like chocolate, it is a comfort, a security blanket, an addiction.
Shaun Eyles , Australia
The taste of home reaches into my gut everytime I walk down the back lane eager to get in from the cold. It's a rich taste that fills my nostrils as I throw aside my coat and lunge into a cuddle with my children. It's more addictive than chocolate and when I have to go away it sustains me through the starched nights of sleeplessness in hotels.
It's heady and hypnotic; it's the burnt toast and salty boiled water from last nights potatoes. It's dirty dishes and drying clothes and yet its more. It's lazy afternoons in bed with my husband or sun soaked mornings playing with the kids.
It's all those days which are insignificant but make up what is my life. It's an extravagant meal with hundreds of courses and I can't stop gorging myself with ever eager mouthfuls.
Laura Shade , Chesterfield
Home is always a comfortable untidiness where lying on the sofa, floor, back garden lawn, or the landing is always easy. There's dust but not too much, lots of things that need replacing and the windows aren't too clean and shiney.
It always smells of the back garden as the back door and windows always feel like they are letting the air in...whether it's damp and cold in winter as the washing is going out to freeze on the washing line, or warm and clean in spring and summer when we start to eat and sit in the garden. I can always hear birds and it's this sound, more than any, that makes me realise that I am waking up in my bed at home, and the smell is of food made in a rush before and then after my parents working day...it doesn t linger; just functional and then forgotten.
Home feels so easy
Kelly Pipes , Leicester, England
Home tastes and feelings and smells that come first to my mind this time are these:
The smell of wet clothes from being caught in a thunderstorm on the way home from swimming in the open air pool at the sea front.
My mum drying us with towels in front of the fire.
The smell of the smoke.
A bowl of new potatoes soaked in butter and eaten with a spoon.
Coal and wood flames dying to embers.
Everybody safe.
Nobody dead.
Nick Pemberton , Cumbria, England
I know I am home each pre-dawn day, when again there is morning soft, vanilla baby skin against my belly, little caterpillar fingers exploring my face, sun-baked beach smell in his white-blond hair, tinkling voice in angel-language. Sleepy warm morning kisses from my love, his neck soft and heady as fresh baked bread when I bury my face in it, his shoulders and arms like a heavy felt blanket enfolding me in fragrant warmth forever. Hot and sweet tannin tea tingles along my tongue, crisp paper and old books offer their fragrance, blast of cold water over my hands feeds my seedlings and delights my son, my bare feet gingerly stepping over tangled grass and squelching mud. Garden roses clipped and extravagant sit regally on my table and send drifts of perfume to mingle with home cooked biscuits and simmering loquat jam chattering away on the stove. I am in a festival for my senses, finding magic in the ordinary, making memories of this home in this time that will endure forever.
Maura Bedloe , Hobart, Tasmania
I have so many memories of my childhood home. When I try to recall them they seem to fall over themselves in my mind and I have trouble sorting one from another. Many seem to be about snow for some reason.
One year we had a great deal of snow – so much that the road disappeared. It must have been three feet deep from side to side and the garden walls completely vanished from sight. We lived at the top of several steep hills and in those days we used coal to heat our homes – no central heating then. I remember one year that the shampoo froze solid on the bathroom windowsill. Our coal was delivered on a lorry that this time couldn’t get anywhere near us. Everyone had to turn out and go down to the main road and bring it back themselves. My father and I – like many others – took a sledge to collect the coal. We dragged it up one hill, then the next and finally to our door.
By then the snow had stopped and the air was clear and bright. From my perspective now it was like a Brueghal – all this activity against a backdrop of clean white snow. No one had a car then so the streets stayed white for days.
Ian , Wiltshire, UK
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