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Happy Birthday Grandad xx

When I opened the window this morning, it smelled like September. I know that it is September, but the air had that September smell in it - you know the one? The one that lets you know that autumn is one its way, that has a bit of a chill in the air. As I write this at just gone 9am, I can't smell that smell any longer, but it was definitely there at 7.40am this morning. However, the chill is there still.

Smells evoke so many memories, some of the memories pleasant, some not so - and the same goes for the smells! A week or so ago, I sniffed my crocheted blanket - the one that has got me into crochet, the one that I made without any pattern, just free-styling it all the way. It had a salty smell to it, tat reminded me of being on the boat with Dad - the cushions and sleeping bags all had a salty tang to them, and my blanket had that same tang. That then reminds me of the morning ablutions on the boat, and being warned that we were better off staying out in the cockpit for a bit - and that is another smell I've smelled recently....

Regarding smells again - here is a bit of a confession - I sniff apples. I sniff melons too, as that is a way to tell if they are ripe or not (for some melons at least). However, apples - some apples have a smell that reminds me of reception class in primary school. I was in Mrs McPherson's class, and we were encouraged to bring along a piece of fruit each day (even if we were school dinners), and to put it in a cardboard basket; every afternoon we would take out our piece of fruit (don't ask me how we each knew which banana or orange was ours - apples are easier to distinguish), sit on the carpet, and listen to the story as we ate our fruit. This was back in 1979, when we didn't have the range of fruit that we have now. I remember the thrill of peaches each summer, corn on the cob and baked potatoes in the autumn (no microwaves to make things easy). Black grapes - not red ones, but black ones - and in our household we usually only had grapes if we were poorly. So, the smell of apples, and each different variety of apple has its own smell. I don't remember seeing the variety of apples that we have bow - then it was golden delicious, red delicious (at certain times of year), Cox's, Granny Smith. Yet, I sniff the Jonagold, Pink Lady, Braeburn and others, and they have that smell.

Anyway - back to the title of this post. Happy birthday Grandad - Grandad Allen. What do you call or did you call your grandparents? Until I met my husband and heard him talk about grandparents, it never occurred to me that people might not follow the same naming protocols that we had in our family. I knew there were different names - gran, granny, nan, nanny, gramps, and so on, but our grandparents were always known by their surname - so Grandad Allen. Today is / would have been his birthday. He was incredible - he told the most amazing stories about his adventures with Charlie Hopkins. To this day, I don't know if he was real or not, although I strongly suspect this mysterious man with a wooden leg lived only in the stories; I'd like to believe he was real. Grandad was in the RAF, and ended up being a Japanese POW - something we heard him rarely talk about. From a young age I knew that he'd been shot, and had a bullet wound in his leg - but at that young age, I didn't want to see it, because I believed that it would be a hole in his leg - one that you could see through, or was still a fresh wound. Oh boy did he have some stories; how he worked on early computers and radar, how he was offered a Rolls Royce, but couldn't bring it back from wherever he was, because there was no way to get it on the boat; stories about flying and not having his code book, having malaria after getting back to the UK and wandering into the WAAF ward. As I write this now, I remember the story that Grandad told us about Grandma, just after she died - a lovely little story that I may share another time; and now we come back to smells and memories again - Grandma made a wonderful egg and bacon flan - unlike any others I have tasted; and she and Grandad used to have a jar of sweets each - and I can smell and almost taste the clove balls now..

Funny, isn't it? A September smell in the air, and so many memories have been evoked...

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