Woodwork
I spent most of yesterday fabricating a board to form part of our camper-van bed. As it had to match the dimensions of the existing board, but be much lighter and easier to handle, the task took longer than I expected. Part of the process involved cutting large holes in the plywood, to allow ventilation of the mattresses. Cutting the holes wasn't difficult, as I used a hole-saw which scorched and burned the wood, bringing back a strange memory.
Around '98 or '99 I had to drive to a conference in Nimes, in the south of France. It's a long way from home, exactly 1000km or about 600 miles from Calais, so the drive and ferry crossing took me almost a full day from Bristol. Whilst driving, I could continually smell burnt or scorched wood for hours on end. It was specifically the smell of scorched iroko wood, remembered, I assume, from a previous occasion when I was using an electric saw to cut shelving and found that the saw-blade blackened and burned the wood whenever I went the slightest bit off-line.
And suddenly, half-way through the conference and following a nose-bleed, my sense of smell disappeared. For several years, I could hardly smell anything. Over the last two years, it has slowly been re-establishing itself, so that now (so far as I can tell) it's about the same as it was ten years ago. But it was awkward, being without smell. I could taste adequately, but smells had to be extremely strong for me to detect and identify them.
The most peculiar sensations were when my nose seemed to prickle, when I could tell there was a nasty smell in the air yet I couldn't smell anything. I had an intellectual knowledge that something smelled bad, but it wasn't the direct experience or the smell itself. I guess the closest comparison is eating when one has a heavy cold, when one knows that the food tastes good , but the actual flavour is undetectable.
I've really appreciated the slow return of my sense of smell, being able to taste better, and to enjoy life more: from flowers to wet woodland and Moonface's armpits, it's all good.
:o)
Around '98 or '99 I had to drive to a conference in Nimes, in the south of France. It's a long way from home, exactly 1000km or about 600 miles from Calais, so the drive and ferry crossing took me almost a full day from Bristol. Whilst driving, I could continually smell burnt or scorched wood for hours on end. It was specifically the smell of scorched iroko wood, remembered, I assume, from a previous occasion when I was using an electric saw to cut shelving and found that the saw-blade blackened and burned the wood whenever I went the slightest bit off-line.
And suddenly, half-way through the conference and following a nose-bleed, my sense of smell disappeared. For several years, I could hardly smell anything. Over the last two years, it has slowly been re-establishing itself, so that now (so far as I can tell) it's about the same as it was ten years ago. But it was awkward, being without smell. I could taste adequately, but smells had to be extremely strong for me to detect and identify them.
The most peculiar sensations were when my nose seemed to prickle, when I could tell there was a nasty smell in the air yet I couldn't smell anything. I had an intellectual knowledge that something smelled bad, but it wasn't the direct experience or the smell itself. I guess the closest comparison is eating when one has a heavy cold, when one knows that the food tastes good , but the actual flavour is undetectable.
I've really appreciated the slow return of my sense of smell, being able to taste better, and to enjoy life more: from flowers to wet woodland and Moonface's armpits, it's all good.
:o)
posted by Moses at
1:33 pm
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