The power of smell: Learning to feel through scent

On our first family holiday to the Blue Mountains, we were surrounded by thick bush. A vine grew around the railings on the terrace outside and when mum was happy, she would cut long tendrils of it and arrange it in three white elliptical vases. The pure oil was sold in tiny exotic tinted glass bottles at Portobello Market in London, by solemn Indian men dressed in dhoti, armoured against the cold in ancient furs or discarded army greatcoats. Damp, talc and hospital smells My father spent the last six weeks of his life in a drab palliative care unit built in a gully, dense with eucalyptus trees. The building never really saw the sun, so a pervasive trace of damp mingled with the everyday hospital odours, like microwaved meals drowned in white sauce, the antiseptic whiff of soap and the fetid presence of death.