Feeling so nostalgic tonight - smells

[GuessThatGranny]

I was out a bike ride today and passed a house with a coal fire. The scents transported me back 50 years to my granny’s house, and I had this overwhelming feeling of being safe and loved and life being uncomplicated. I really really wish I had a coal fire tonight.

then I got to thinking about the smoke from my uncle’s pipe - no idea what kind it was, but oh how I loved and miss that smell.

Smells are such powerful memory triggers, aren’t they?

Yes massively powerful. There's been a lot about this since loss of smell became so much more common with COVID.

I can remember the smell of a local factory from my childhood and somehow miss it.

Coal fires are so unhealthy and uncommon it's quite rare to smell them now.

I went on a steam train recently and the smell was so nostalgic. I literally had my head out the window the whole time to smell it. I wasn't even aware it smelt years ago.

Also smelt pipe smoke recently but couldn't see where from. It made me feel cosy

Smells are more evocative that we think. And more so as we get older. Like whizzing back in time.

Mine is fresh cut grass. As soon as I smell it, I'm back to 1975 and my dad cutting our huge back lawn. I'd gone to bed, but wasn't asleep and I'd kneel on my bed and watch him. He'd notice me occasionally and gesture for me to get to bed, but I'd watch again when he wasn't looking! Happy times 🤗

Love the smell of pipe tobacco and one of my Grandads always had the lingering smell of it. Tomatoes remind me
of my other Grandad’s allotment.
fresh cut grass is incredibly nostalgic too and coal tar soap

We only had coal tar soap when we went on holiday. It takes me straight back to Weymouth in the 1970s. Long hot summers, days on the beach, fish and chips and falling to sleep in bunk beds, me on the top bunk, my brother on the bottom and Mum and Dad playing cards behind an orange flowery curtain.

My nostalgic smell is the sun warming metal on a playground. It's getting less common with more equipment being made from plastic.
And petrol going in the car.

Play doh
Creosote (not that you can get it now, but I can imagine it and evokes a strong memory even thinking about it)
Horses

My Dad worked with diesel engines, he used to come home smelling of diesel, oil and grease so I love that smell. My Grandad used Imperial Leather soap and my Grandma had a pomander filled with lavender so whenever I smell either of those I am transported back to being a little girl and visiting them.

Showing my age now, but does anyone remember those little fuel tablets you could get for toy steam engines. They smelt so good.

Nostalgic smells, like woodsmoke coming from the houseboats near me, can really make me well up with such a longing for my lost loved ones and the memories I made with them. Smell can summon such deep emotions and old thoughts.

I also love the smells of creosote and firelighters. Mmmmmmm

My uncle, long dead, smoked a few cigars at Christmas - maybe a packet of five. A few years ago I was in town and a man had his car window down and he was smoking a cigar so I went over to explain and asked him to blow the smoke my way, please.

Tomato stalks. Takes me straight back to my darling Granddad's greenhouse. He's been dead 20+ years, but that smell and I'm a child in his garden again....

Cars without catalytic converters. I don't realise now much of a nostalgic smell it is until I smell one.

Oh yes, creosote. My dad painting it on the fence on summer evenings and letting me have a sip of his beer. Mum watering the garden and the wet concrete and mown grass smell of it all.

@motleymop I remember that smell of the steam engine tablets! My dad, grandad and brother all crawling around the carpet trying to make the thing work.....and when it did the little whistle would toot.

Bonfire night still smells exactly like it did when I was a kid in the 70s.

Most of mine are associated with Grandparents
Geraniums in my Nana's porch
The smell of tomatoes in my Grandads green house
His pipe smoke mixed with the smell of blackcurrant bushes where he went to smoke

My other grandparents are associated with the smell of tractor oil in the sheds on the farm and peanuts and liquorice in their front room.

Also lavender takes me right back to when I had my children as I always has a lavender bath when I was in labour

I'm back for more on this lovely thread that deserves more attention. Tobacco. Old school tobacco, the kind you buy from a shop. My father smoked a pipe and had come from a family of tobacco shop owners/cigar merchants (all died in the war/ holocaust), and when I was a child, my father had glass jars full of these various loose tobaccos on a shelf... beautiful to smell... hints of vanilla and just that rich, beautiful, spicy tobacco smell that nobody under the age of 50 would know these days.😆
I know that if I were to smell that smell now, I would cry.
Sometimes, I walk by someone wearing an old perfume from the 80s, and I am immediately transported to my teen years and for a second I'm filled with all of the hunger for living that flows through our veins when we're young. We want to tear our teeth into the life ahead, the future cast out widely before us. It's such a beautiful thing to relive those long years from long ago reincarnated inside a single moment of scent.

Love the smell of Playdough. The smell of Shepherds' pie reminds me of my nan's cooking.

I love the smell of pipe tobacco. My dad smoked a pipe. He used to let me roll the tobacco for him. And at Christmas, he and his friends smoked cigars. The smell of cigar smoke always makes me feel christmassy.

I've always thought that certain smells provoke very vivid memories of things,much more so than sights or sounds. I know there's a scientific reason for this,can't remember off the top of my head wanders off to Google it. The smell that stirs memories for me is the scent of Hawaiian Tropic suncream. It reminds me of my first holiday abroad,in Spain,1982,when I was 18.

Op I'm with you. My grandad was a pipe smoker and I can still recognise that particular tobacco even now. I love the smell of fresh cut grass, wood and coal smoke and tar!!!

Wood fires take me back to the late 70s, when we would stay in Arnside in a house next to the level crossing every September, and had to bring the wood in for the fire. Sometimes the crossing keeper would let us watch him pull the levers in his box - very exciting!

I was very disappointed on returning to find that not only was the house much smaller than I remembered, but the crossing gates are now automated and the signal box is a conservatory....

The smell of crayons. Especially when they've been stored in a tin. When you take the lid off the smell hits you. Takes me right back to my early days at primary school. I've actually filled a tin so I can enjoy the waft of crayons from time to time 😂