What is the strangest thing that triggers intense nostalgia or emotion for you?

[Missohnoyoubetterdont]

Not the standard smell of cut grass or old perfume. I mean something completely specific and quirky. For me, it is the sound of wood pigeons calling on a warm summer’s evening , or the feeling when you get up really early and there’s that stillness and possibility hanging in the air , I think it’s the wonderful feeling of potential and reminds me of travelling in hot sunny climbs. Other weird one is the smell of hot water bottles! Reminds me of childhood. It gives me a profound, aching sort of homesickness for a time I can’t quite name. What is your weird emotional trigger?"

The sound of crows/pigeons in a church cemetery and the smell of cypress (?) trees. No idea why but very soothing.

That pencil shavings, chalk, carbolic school smell. Different now of course.

That hot baked air and cigarette smoke from overseas airports and also hot air, olive oil and baking bread in hot countries.

Going into shops and that new clothes smell. Some shops have it, some don't.

The smell of blaďderwrack just after the tide has turned.

The hymn "Oh Jesus I Have Promised". Takes me straight back to lining up.and hymn books being given out before going into assembly at primary school.

YES! Is it the sort of hot, soft plastic smell? Slightly sweet? Always reminds me of those Silly Putty toys you used to get in glittery semi-transparent plastic eggs 😍

What a lovely thread!

For me it’s the smell of pipe tobacco. Takes me right back to childhood and is so lovely and comforting. Also blackbirds singing in the evenings - I have a really strong memory of lying on the sofa on a summer’s evening after a really hot day. The sun was setting over the garden, patio doors wide open and all the colours filling the room and the blackbird in full song. I can remember thinking at the time “I wish I could stay here forever”. Such a vivid and happy memory.

Enid Blyton books....
My childhood.....Read so many of them,but loved Famous Five, St Clares and Malory Towers. My husband and daughter actually bought them all for me for Christmas.
It's like a physical ache for times that were just unhurried and easier withoutany worries.....and we didn't realise how special they were...

Oh Yes! And When a Knight Won His Spurs.
Straight back to primary school. I wonder if they sing them anymore.

All the "Come and Praise" hymns. There's a guy on YouTube who plays and sings them and I sing along sometimes.

"I was cold. I was naked were you there, were you there" 😆

For me it’s ’the Ink is black, the page is white!’ We used to sing this seemingly every day at primary school! 😂

Sunflowers 🌻
Petrol fumes 😂
Hot Chocolate ☕
Bird song 🐦
Seeing Airmail stickers ✈️
Panini Sticker Albums 📔
The smell of freshly baked bread 🍞

The smell of cigarettes - Benson and Hedges. Even the gold foil has a particular smell I'd know anywhere. Nan who smoked..thankfully my parents did not.

Many of these are small related! Such an evocative sense I think, I can still remember the smell of my dogs puppies as a child.

Roast dinner something I rarely ever have but if I smell it, I'm back in my nan and granddad's house (60s) nan has roast beef cooking and she's making the gravy on the stove top using the cabbage water.

Also Fairy Liquid, she used it and that also takes me back to being in the scullery as she washed up in the big square kitchen sink with wooden draining board.

I bought a leather handbag in a charity shop and didn't realise it was clearly owned by a smoker until I got home. The smell of stale smoke and leather reminds me of being in 6th form and my first boyfriend who was a bit of a rebel.

Creosote takes me back to the 1980s.
Imperial leather soap is my granny's house.
The smell of the earth cooling down after a really hot day is camping in Dorset in 1988.

I agree that nostalgia is a physical feeling, I can only describe it as homesickness in my stomach.

Jars of mixed herbs always remind me of home economics kitchens at school.

I work in schools and recently smelled a smell I haven’t since I was a child at school, it was the smell of dettol mixed with wood shavings. Remember the metal bucket and shovel that was always ready to clean up sick ?

I love the sound of cicadas. In Australia we have cicadas that sound like impact sprinkles.

I think it's the second one in this video.

Sheep baaing in the distance. It reminds me of when I used to go camping in a small tent with my parents and sister as a child, so my dad could do overnight fishing. We would wake up to the sheep baaing. Also, the smell of pine wood panneling reminds me of when I used to use the shedlike changing rooms for swimming at my primary school. Certain songs take me back to being single and nightclubbing. Some good memories, some bad.

Won’t let me edit this but I meant smell!

The smell of a crisp cold winter night makes me think about walking to town to meet my friends in my early twenties for drinks. If I could bottle the smell I would!

So many songs! The Riddle by Nick Kershaw, Feels like Heaven by the Fiction Factory, Get Into the Groove. A particular shade of pink reminds me of my childhood bedroom. Blossom, the lilac My Little Pony. The smell of vine tomatoes transports me back to Grandads allotment. Tarmac is the smell of hot summers roller skating through the alleys of the estate. Yellow roses remind me of my Nan, those tins of golden Virginia tobacco is my Dad. I lost my parents at Christmas after the suffered very long illnesses and often retreat into playlist from the 80’s to remind them when they were young and healthy.

I agree on tobacco smoke from a pipe, my uncle smoked an old school pipe abd that smell is so nostalgic, takes me back to Sunday afternoons at my grandparents house.

The smell of oil and garages, my dad was a truck mechanic and that’s what he’d smell of when he came in from work.

Liminal spaces have quite a strong nostalgic hold on me. It makes me yearn for a time and place I never existed in.

Pinball.
And the fact that my fingers will still type the prompts to load (some) programmes from the '80s BBC or Sinclair Spectrum computers, and the screen looks inherently 'right', even though my brain would somehow be fuzzy if I tried to think deeply about it (found this out at a computer museum).
Recalling all the words to 'Found A Peanut' and making my then-primary school daughter helpless with laughing.
Apple cider ice lollies.
Body Shop Ananya perfume! Although haven't smelt that again in a long time now.