Nomad: Sniffing my way through

London is an amazing place to sniff.

What am I saying here? The whole world is an amazing place to sniff! Well…perhaps not Bangladesh, India and even some places in Ukraine, China and Africa, but…probably, hopefully, most of the world still is. Otherwise, why be given the amazing power of teleportation anywhere in space and time with nothing but our noses?

To me, Dune by Dior is an immediate trigger for dusty memories. Whenever I feel it in the air, I’m instantly back in kindergarten and there she is, the teacher, Miss…I can’t remember her name anymore. But I see her standing in front of me, mid-thirties, her face – smiling, radiant, beautiful – short, blonde hair and full lips that move hypnotizingly when she talks. But our eyes are rather drawn to the bag of round, assorted candy she is holding and would only dispense in limited amounts, in exchange for the right answer to whatever the question is.

Somewhere, burried in the bag of olfactive memories remains the innocent smell of my first crush. Nothing fancy there, just clean clothes washed by mom with probably too much detergent and not rinsed enough. But whenever he’d come near me or walk me home from school, my otherwise hardly teasable nostrils would open up wide – just for him – and allow the whole of him inside, almost as if my nose was making love to his scent. I remained inebriated with all these new feelings for him for months until, one day, my nose decided it could no longer stand that clean clothes smell about this guy and it was all over between us.

On rare occasions, I find myself cheating a little by reversing the memory reenactment process and that only occurs when thoughts of a man who long ago came into my life out of the blue and smelling like Paco Rabanne’s Ultraviolet take over me. Whenever I feel like remembering him and I, together, all I ned to do is just just walk into a Boots pharmacy and spray a little perfume on one of them testing strips and take it all in, filling my lungs and getting dizzy with the bitter-sweet memories of that spring we shared, mad and impatient like adolescents, jealous and passionate like all young lovers are, but beautiful.

  

And have you ever passed through a poor neighbourhood, by an open kitchen window at lunch time and the smell of fresh stu made your mouth water as it transported you back to grandma’s kitchen, with a hot bowl of her special Armenian soup on the table and a spoon in your left hand?

For an outsider, the air in London is easily acknowledgeable but difficult to explain and incredibly temperamental, just as it’s breathers – some I’ve come to know, some I’ve developed peculiar feelings for, some have left me crawling, some I despise, others despise me, most I have yet to meet someday.

But London is a wonderful place to sniff. Take a Thursday night Soho for example, with it’s narrow streets, artist hubs, busy taverns, gay bars, eclectic Chinatown crowds and moustached hipsters. Add some noise, Lager beer, vulgarity, sophistication and overflowing garbage bags to it and you’ll get one of my favourite places to be.

In East Ham, no matter the hour or day it is, the air would most likely reak of curry and incense, whereas in Brixton, whether they call it weed, cheeba, ganja, sensi, camilla, reefer, doobie, we all know what that funky smell is.

Richmond, Shoredich, the canals and quiet harbours, a full English Hash, South Kensington at six in the morning, late October in Greenwich, almost Christmas in Clapham Common, outside my window on a rainy day off, but never Saturday or Sunday, Angel, Imperial Wharf, fog rising over Chiswick on New Year’s Day, summer in Holland Park, th moment before and after we’ve had our favourite four dishes in our Chinese restaurant, the old brick walls and I, as a physical manifestation of all of them, combined.

  

Just between me and you and regardless of what I may have said before, the best place in the city is my neighbourhood, where the air is constantly soaked in freshly baked sourdough and horse manure. It’s where we settled, the closest thing to a home we’ve built on our own, so far. Our room is there and it smells of us.

So to all of you living in London or just passing by, the next time you come out of your rented house, the hundred-year-old inn or the five star hotel you’re staying at but complaining about the weather or some other meaningless detail you won’t even remember about tomorrow, just take a deep breath and hold it in for a moment, knowing you might be sharing it with some of the most fascinating people who are alive today, be they musicians, writers, paintors, designers, muses, engineers, comedians or…RuPaul.

Now, is this the best place for a sniff, or what?

Green Eyed Kisses,