Jane Lovering: Scented toilet paper and other modern day curses

I mean, when was the last time you sniffed your toilet roll? I had run out of tissues and needed to blow my nose, so I pulled some off the roll and though…that smells…odd. And then I started to wonder... When did we get this expectation that everything had to smell ‘nice’? Everything, these days, seems to come with a smell that doesn’t, in my opinion, smell like the thing it’s supposed to smell like. Fabric softener that smells of ‘meadows’? Really? I’ve never smelled a meadow that had the bouquet of melted plastic and talcum powder, but that’s what those fabric softeners smell like to me. And then there’s air fresheners that smell of ‘rose garden’? Just a tip – why not open the window and smell actual garden? Or even just fresh air?

All right, I have to admit to a sneaky liking for scented candles, but only occasionally, and my house does otherwise smell of wet and incontinent dog, with a soupcon of ‘something that’s been in the fridge for three months’. So sometimes it’s nice to light a candle and have a pleasant smell waft past, rather than the old dog whose wafts are far less fragrant. But these are temporary (the candles I mean, not the old dog’s wafts). Blow out the candle and the smell is gone. Wash your clothes in highly scented fabric softener and you smell artificial for weeks, apparently. And do not get me started on those plug in things that change their smell every 40 minutes, in case your nose gets bored with the fragrance! Nowadays nobody seems to want their house to smell of real, normal things, otherwise you’d be able to get air fresheners that smelled of new bread or coffee beans or, in my case, soaking dog and trodden in poo, but that’s beside the point. Everything has to be scented and fragranced in such an artificial way – when did you last smell ‘Tuscan Meadows’? I bet you were in Tuscany at the time, with the windows open. Why would I want to be in a house in Sheffield and smelling something reminiscent of a foreign holiday, mixed with hot plastic and that cheap perfume that market stalls knock out? My favourite smell is washing that’s been dried on a line. The smell of sunshine and breeze, not pretend honeysuckle and fake jasmine, just clean, plain dried cotton. I quite like the smell of my puppy’s ears too, and the first opening of a jar of coffee, when you pull back the foil. None of these are air freshener scents, probably because they are real and homely and unmanufactured. So let’s open some windows, bake some bread and sniff some dogs, and not let the ‘fake smells’ win!