What's your Proustian madeleine?

[BrightonCalling]

Simple things that hit your memory/nostalgia button?
Things that take me right back:

The smell of limes
Airplane trails at dawn or dusk
Hearing seagulls from in bed
Lawnmowers on summer days
A weird one: an open window with curtains gently flapping

the clatter of rugby studs in a dressing room and the smell of wintergreen. (Dad was a referee and we spent many a weekend hanging round rugby clubs!)

The smell of coal tar from a vapouriser thing which was lit to help me to breathe during the night during my many attacks of bronchitis as a child, and the pattern of light that it cast on the ceiling from the candle inside it.

robins spray starch on the ironing.

The smell of stables.
Hot cars.

Sound of wood pigeons on a summer day

The local ice cream van playing "Teddy Bears' Picnic". I'm not sure I've ever even bought an ice cream from the van - we weren't allowed as kids - but I heard the music when I was playing outside with DD at the weekend. For a moment or two, it was the 80s again and I was playing in the garden with my little brother (now a big, bearded married man and a dad). It was such a reassuring feeling - as though nothing is ever really lost.

The scents of lilacs and spirea arguta (I think! Or does spirea not have a lovely smell?)

Oh, and freshly cut timber. Reminds me of dad, granddad, and saunas.

Seagulls
rain on a tin roof
The smell of camping gas
The feel of morning dew from the grass between my toes
All reminders of happy summer holidays

The smell of tobacco
The smell of swarfega
That weird enclosed sound you get inside a greenhouse, like your ears are popping
All reminders of my dad

The smell of road being laid reminds me of my 6th birthday, as the tar mac pavement outside our house was relaid, and I was given a keypers toy.

Lying in bed with the windows open and curtains closed

I went into a church on Monday for a Iook-around on a day out. The organist was tuning up for a practice and played just two bars and it hit me, my whole utterly church-oriented childhood. I even knew the hymn.

'I'll name that tune in two, Tom.' I had tears. So so conflicted about it all. Family, church, childhood, the textures of obedience and conditional love.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise

And my father died a Richard Dawininsesque atheist.

Gorse flowers on a hot day and I'm straight back to my rural Hampshire primary school.
Gorse flowers and honeysuckle and I'm back to the road home from work, across the garrigue, in the south of France.
Any horse smell tranquilizes me.
Cow and I'm back to childhood.
Wood pigeon coo too.
My father's jumper on Sunday, smelling slightly of pub and pipe smoke.
Mum's face powder was comfort. If you got near enough to smell it, she was in a relaxed mood and not whisking round doing things.
Wallflowers. Every garden in the 60s seemed to have them.

The mournful cry of seagulls. It reminds me of family holidays at the seaside as a child.
The sound of a train rattling past in the distance,late at night,when I'm tucked up in bed. Always makes me feel safe and warm.
The smell of creosote on a fence in a warm garden. Reminds me of happy times 'helping' my DDad,who was a keen gardener.
The smell of lemon. Reminds me of my late DMum,her hand cream smelt of lemons.

The sound of a wood pigeon (coo-coo, coo-coo) takes me back to my grandparents house as there was one that sat in the tree outside

I was going to post exactly that.

The sound of a train, far off, at night.
The smell of Youth Dew.
The taste of the 'honey', sucked out of honeysuckle.
The feel of pastel-striped flannel sheets.

The sound of the windscreen wipers in the car when it’s raining.

The smell of sugarbeat

That quiet time after a heavy rain in summer. It feels like possibilities.

@GuntyMcGee

Swarfega yes!!! sniff

The smell of gorse on a sunny day takes me back to Cornish holidays.

Sugar beet to schooldays in Essex. Vile smell!

So many other wood pigeons 😍

Damp wool.
Warm canvas.
Wood smoke and freshly made pottage.

Takes me back to my favourite place and time in the whole world.

this thread is delicious.

Cigar smoke makes me think of autumn days and my father

A hard to describe smell when it is raining hard outside, and the windows are fugged up with wet washing and potatoes boiling.

Satsumas and Christmas trees

Frankincense will always remind me of the love of my life., who brought me some back from his travels abroad.

Seaweed and the smell of the sea takes me back to my childhood.

Coal tar soap.
Crisp autumn mornings.
Slippery leather car seats.
Football scores being read on sat afternoon tv

The width of a 1930s banister rail.

We visited friends who'd just bought a house of that era so we had a look around. As we went downstairs I put my hand on the banister, and suddenly I just saw my family home that I grew up in.

Hearing my parents downstairs laughing at a t.v. Show
My grandmother’s perfume ‘Emeraude’
My mother’s voice
The sound of a well hit tennis ball

Elbow's song "The Bones of You" is about this very thing:
So I'm there,
Charging around with a juggernaut brow
Overdraft speeches and deadlines to make
Cramming commitments like cats in a sack
Telephone burn and a purposeful gait

When out of a doorway the tentacles stretch
Of a song that I know and the world moves in slow-mo
Straight to my head like the first cigarette of the day

And it's you and it's May
And we're sleeping through the day
And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away

Do I have time? A man of my calibre?
Stood in the street like a sleepwalking teenager?
No. And I dealt with this years ago
I took a hammer to every memento

But image on image like beads on a rosary
Pull through my head as the music takes hold
And the sickener hits, I could work till I break
But I love the bones of you, that I will never escape

And it's you, and it's May
And we're sleeping through the day
And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away

The smell of tomato plants in a hot greenhouse.

Cut grass and splitting the stalk of a daisy to make daisy chains

The smell of Oil of Ulay.

Awh I love this thread! I have so many I know but as others have said it can be hard to think of them on the spot without the relevant stimuli; that’s part of the magic of nostalgia for me :)

The smell of crisp autum mornings

The smell of the air in summer evenings when it is just starting to cool down

I grew up near an orchard; the mingled smell of apples and wood smoke in autumn

The smell of Eros by Versace (DH wore this all the time when we met as it was the first fragrance I bought him)

The sound of love music from a distance on a summer evening

The light, sounds and smell of a small chip shop of van on a cold winter evening

The sight of a particular pub near my parents house that me and DH used to go

Canal boats

Forgot to add the smell in the sky before thunder comes, and yes to Youth Dew! My mums favourite perfume

My son had to point out how nonsensical my explanation of knowing it was about to storm was, because it I said it smelled like the taste of licking warm sandstone, which I haven't ever done. But storm-coming-ness makes me feel about 6 years old, I used to race about outside trying to see the first lightning.