I really wanted raisins again but instead got Aegean seaweed.

There are people who insist they ‘think’ in smells but still feel compelled to describe them to themselves and, I’ve noticed, others who have to work with them.

“Whenever I think of the number ‘nine’ I think I smell bacon.”
“What do you think of when you smell bacon?” I asked him.
“Bacon.”
He replied and gave a ‘what else did you think’ sort of disparaging shrug and slight shake of his head. The answer I was actually looking for was, “I’m sorry, I appear to have been something of a twat again and now I’ll quietly get on with some vitally important IT work”

He was an irritating, always being different to be more interesting sort of bloke who left three weeks ago, to be replaced by an interestingly different sort of woman named Karen, who is not at all irritating, quite the opposite.

When Karen leant over my left shoulder two hours ago to peer, I presume, at my monitor and to ask a vitally important IT question I couldn’t help notice her luxuriant auburn hair actually smelt of a beach in a very distinctive way. While she was dangling her locks in my face I found myself thinking less about the catch rules for method declarations and more about a couple of Croydon’s shiny-pink seals hauled up on a stretch of Turkish sand. I didn’t want to be on that beach, or any other beach actually, and to compound my discomfort the Croydon-two had latched on like a pair of hungry babies, from hotel to Lycian harbour, back to hotel and to beach. If they could have slept on the floor in our room then we wouldn’t have been forced to lose even more precious hours of togetherness in their company.

If I was on that beach tonight and I told the Croydons that this place smells exactly, no really exactly, like my colleague’s hair they might have suddenly found they wanted some just-us time. But I don’t think I’ve ever found it in reverse, for instance some cakes smell of old people but I’ve surprisingly never thought of Cream Horns while queuing in the village shop where there’s a permanent elderly presence. Hence all the queuing, it seems to take them longer to buy two carrots than to peel them, cook them and bitterly regret that they don‘t taste like carrots used to taste. So if we do only associate scents in one direction because our brains are wired that way it seems illogical, unless we’re trying subconsciously to put something tangible where only an abstraction of a smell exists.

Scent is of course a powerful sensory memory trigger, and hair is so odorously evocative after the chemical-plant leak has blown over, a day or so after washing, and probably unique to that person. I don’t know why or how Kaz managed to get close enough for all this hair association, she is by her own admission very tactile, so I suppose that’s why, and the how was just a matter of leaning over too far. I can remember various girlfriend’s hair smelling of apples, hot wet jumpers and airing cupboards, which can be perilously close to essence of old people, but my favourite was dried fruit.

Relational memory perceived from the olfactory system must serve a purpose that we no longer depend on perhaps and it seems more accurate than sight or hearing for painting a detailed picture, even one that’s better forgotten. So we must all be carrying around hundreds of thousands of possible images and long-winded memories along with a few thousand recognizable smells just waiting for the bridge made in a millisecond; by someone who’s irrationally keen interest in JavaScript is only eclipsed by her complete disregard for appropriate personal proximity. It’s the Croydons all over again, well maybe not, they weren’t extremely attractive and their hair, surely, must have smelt of this office.