Diversions Manifold

Writing about smelling things makes me feel remarkably uneasy. It seems to be more acceptable somehow to write about music or noise, photography or fashion, even about its food and drink counterpart than it is about odour itself. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Developing the sense of smell is, after all, a skill, a talent, an art, just like learning to listen and to see. And, standing as I do at the very bottom of the olfactory learning curve, I’m very bad at it. Unless I had a cold and I couldn’t breathe or taste properly, I took my sense of smell totally for granted. I would pay great heed to it in potentially negative scenarios, like sniffing for food or clothes that were a bit off - until recently, when a book opened my nose to that most chemical of arts, perfume. That book was The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin. I unexpectedly found this alluring accord of olfactory geekery and scientific erudition on my bookshelf at home, where it had been left by my father who, as a c