Some Osmical Things to do on World Smell Day

For starters, you might reflect that in this time of temporary money gloom, it costs nothing enjoy the free smells which are all around you. You can enjoy endless hours in tracking down the source of the scent from flowers.

• When you wake-up, stick your nose out of your duvet and smell the world around you – examine your house like a sniffer dog – and perhaps sense its aromas for the first time.
  
• As you go to work – pick a few leaves or blades of grass – crush them – and inhale the divine green aroma notes.
  
• Buy your partner a small bottle of an essential oil – which they can use for an aromatic bath (few drops only).
  
• Slow-down in chewing your food today – and concentrate on the aromas and flavours.
  
• Get to know your own unique body signature scent – try a gentle finger in an arm pit (try both) – and enjoy sniffing the result.
  
• If your local wine store is having any tasting sessions today – indulge and try to identify the key aroma notes.
  
• Stride confidently into your nearest Jaguar showroom – tell them about World Smell Day and your celebration of the sense of smell – and get permission to sit in a jaguar, with the doors shut, for 5 minutes, so that you can enjoy its inimitable tell-tale smell.
  
• Examine all of the perfumes and fragrances you may have lying around – use a smelling strip (a strip of clean absorbent paper will do) – and spend time noticing the individual scent notes.
  
• Put a little of your favourite scent or smell on a smelling strip – and with your eyes closed – sniff it throughout the day – this is smell meditation and is a natural form of relaxation.

A sniff a day – keeps the doctor at bay!

A shepherd who lived up in Gwent
Kept a dozen old skunks in his tent;
When asked, ‘Do they smell?’
He answered: ‘Too well!
They spotted my scent – so they went.’
(E.O.Parrott)

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Jungian Cows
In Switzerland, the people call their cows
Venus, Eve, Salome, or Fraulein Alberta,
beautiful names
to yodel across the pastures at Bollingen.

If the woman is busy with child or book,
the farmer wears his wife’s skirt
to milk the most sensitive cows.

When the electric milking-machines arrives,
the stalled cows rebel and sulk
for the woman’s impatient skilful fingers
on their blowzy tough rosy udders,
will not give their milk;

so the man who works the machine
dons cotton skirt, all floral delicate flounces
to hide his denim overalls and big old muddy boots,
he fastens the cool soft folds carefully,
wraps his head in his sweetheart’s Sunday-best fringed scarf, and walks smelling feminine and shy among the cows,

till the milk spurts, hot, slippery and steamy
into the churns,
Venus, Salome, Eve, and Fraulein Alberta,
lowing, half-asleep,
accepting the disguised man as an echo of the woman,
their breath smelling of green, of milk’s sweet traditional climax.
(Penelope Shuttle; 1947-present)