Friday, September 08, 2006

Home smells

Yesterday I was sick. Today I am much better and back at work, but yesterday I was sick. It was my reoccuring stomach ache thing, that I've had pretty much since I came home from Uni.

I had jumped up at 545, taken my medication and practically fell down the ladder of my cabin, high sleeper bed. These things were not designed for ill people, however practical their space creating height maybe. A huge wave of nausea hit me, and I raced to the bathroom, rudely shoving family aside, and then stumbling almost blindly to bed. (Sorry family!) I am unusal in that I vomit only very very rarely, and so have to sit with such stomach pains for a while. Whilst vomiting is never plesant, in way I wish I would just be sick in these situations as then I'd get rid of whatever was troubling me.

However, sickness is not what I wanted to be the thrust of today's post. Lying in bed all day wrapped in my duvet, I was struck by the fact that home smells. I am not being rude about my mothers cleaning abilities, or implying that the various other members of my family have body odour isssue. There is this all pervading smell in the house, and it seems to get stronger upstairs. I really can't distinguish its component parts. There is something metallic, something cool, something like washing powder, but nothing I can explicitly explain. A whiff of it makes me feel sleepy and comforted, and makes me think of my cheek against the cool side of the pillow, and of dreamless sleep and early mornings reading in sunrise light.

I enjoyed my day in bed playing with the laptop and broken wireless. I slept for a few hours at a time and pestered a person in the interim.

There are other smells that make me at home. Stewing apple is forever being four, and at home with mum and watching her chop the huge sour cooking apples from our tree. Flapjack smell is coming home from school. The mingle of wool suits and sweat and silk ties and engine oil is my dad when he'd come and see me after work. Jasmin is my granny, cigars my papa. There are Soton smells that tell me I'm at home too. Leather bound books, photocopy ink, kebab.

The smell of the nape of someone's neck.

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