The strangest things invoke memories don't they?

I am sane today thank you x

Tomorrow is another day

If I smell carnations I'm instantly transported back to the day when aged 11 I had my first period.
I walked home from school at lunchtime and told mum, she sorted me out and I went back to school after making her promise that she wouldn't tell dad when he got home from his early shift.
When school finished, dad was waiting outside in the car, took me shopping and bought me tin of Morny Carnation Talc.
To the day she died mum insisted she hadn't told him, and I know she had!!!

Wright's Cola Tar soap. My aunt & Uncle's bungalow reeked of it. We went there alternate Sundays for tea & they had the most gorgeous garden for a small child with winding paths & hidey holes & a swinging couch thing. I loved it there & was left to explore to my heart's content.

Conifer hedges, when I was a child we used to stay with a Great Aunt in the New Forest for our summer holiday. The house was surrounded conifer hedges and I used to slip in between them to play with the little girl next door,

Privet hedge in flower. Booom, deduct sixty years.

Also bracken, some other ferns. We had fields of it head-high and would make clearings by falling into it and bashing it down.

My Grandpa used Brilliantine on his hair. It had a very distinct smell. In fact the bathroom at their house smelled of it. Not a bad smell, but a memory making one

The scent of ragged robin takes me back to when I was 5 years old, standing with other girls under some trees by a gate in the garden of my first school. It was a convent and I can remember being hugely impressed by all the Hail Marys and the wonderful nun who taught us. I only attended the school for one year but I have many happy memories of it.

I remember my family home and the warm nights after a hot summers day the smell of stocks and old fashioned roses in the garden.

Lemon verbena takes me right back to childhood. I had completely forgotten 'Tweed' perfume, my mother used to wear it - I wonder if they still make it? Her best friend used to wear 'Joy' which I loathed then and now, though I loved her friend, who sadly went to live in Malta. And of course, the smell of chalk certainly takes me back...

Gibbs tins of sold toothpaste ,,,,,mmm ...reminds me of my dad who was a smoker and only he was allowed the Gibbs ....but I used to secretly use it ...and eat it as well ! Wonder if you can still get it ?.... and the vaseline shampoo in sachets of powder you mixed with water ?

Leather ( school satchel)
Imperial leather soap ( a favourite Aunt/uncle)
Lilacs in flower ( childhood garden)
Tomato smell in greenhouse ( my DGP's greenhouse where I would steal and eat tiny tomatoes.)

All your lovely memories brought back the smell of Californian Poppy and 4711 colognes, and my mum who used to wear Tweed and Yardley Freesia... I do miss those days.

Coconut oil - Indian girls at school, then sun tanning "lotion"
Pears Soap - my grandfather
Mothballs - love it!!! - my favourite aunt
Heliotrope [cherry-pie] flowers - just loved it
New books - a rarity in my childhood
cussons face powder - my mother...

The smell of Pears soap reminds me of the times I had to go into hospital as a child. I was in for my tonsils out and also in an isolation hospital for scarlet fever. Both times my mum packed Pears soap for me. In those days it was quite posh I think as we never used it at home.

The smell of Blue Grass perfume because it was my first grown up perfume. My sister bought it for me for Christmas when I was fourteen.

It's a word that brings back a memory of a smell with me:
the word ointment always bring back the smell of zinc & castor oil ointment.

I buy a certain soap which has a smell reminiscent of some soap we used in my childhood, but I can't remember which one we used to have.

My DM used to use 'Evening in Paris' perfume and Yardleys Face cream, haven't smelt them for a long time.

Does anyone rememeber Hay perfume from Boots? (1960s I think - didn't last long). I thought it was brilliant.

I'm loving this topic.

Does anyone remember those sachets of Bristows shampoo that they sometimes put in magazines? It had a lovely smell.

The clean woody smell of a new house. I went with a friend to see her new house recently and was immediately transported back to age 6. We had lived in a flat over my uncle's shop. One day we all walked over the mountain. Quite a long walk for two little girls. We went to see our new house. I loved it immediately,

I see on this thread,that like me,smells seem to be the most evocative sense to trigger a memory. I noticed this phenomenon many years ago and was curious as to why this was. The scientific explanation (put simply!) is as follows;- 'The olfactory bub which starts inside the nose,runs along the bottom of the brain and has direct connections to 2 brain areas that are strongly implicated in emotion and memory,the amygdala and the hippocampus. Interestingly,visual,auditory and and tactile (touch) do not run through these brain areas. This is probably why olfaction (smell) more than any other sense is so successful in triggering emotions and memories'. I find that the smell of creosote,used for weather-proofing fences takes me back over 45 years to when I was 5,and going out into the garden just after my DD had done the annual fence maintenance.

Nonnie1 - I think you must mean 'Linco Beer'! I remember it well as I loved the stuff.

Can anyone remember how your dad always put manure on the roses? My dad would get a delivery from a farmer and he would barrow it from the grass verge onto the garden. It was dreadful!

Of course this was in the days before we got all chemical which lent itself to the rhubarb and custard joke ! The old ones are always the best

DH still uses horse manure on the garden (he lets it rot well first thought, so it doesn't smell!)

though!

The smell that I remember is cow parsley. My childhood home had a very large garden part of which was not cultivated and there was masses of cow parsley which we played in. I have even mentioned to my daughter that when I die - if it is in the summer -that she get the florist to put some cow parsley in with the funeral flowers.

Aqua manda perfume reminds me of moving into my first flat in early 70s loved the smell