I have a headache that has been steadily growing throughout the day. Before you tell me to go find the paracetamol, I don’t think we have any. I have already taken cough medicine today anyway - and I don’t particularly want to go mixing drugs. It’s not that I’m paranoid - I just don’t want any freak reactions to cause a case of “Bloaty Head” (you have to have played the computer game “Theme Hospital” to get that one).
The cough medicine reminded me of childhood. Isn’t it weird how our senses are linked to our memory. The sickly sweet taste of the gloopy medicine as I dripped it from the spoon brought back memories of my parents threatening me to hold still while they spoon fed medicine to me as a child. Memories of standing by the sink in the kitchen flood back - as do cutting my foot on the drive when I was 5 (one of my first memories, bizarrely enough).
Other sensory triggers for me are varied…
Lavender reminds me of my Nan’s house. When my brother and I were small we would stay over from time to time - the bedrooms had walnut chests of drawers in them, and the drawers always had lavender in. Staying at our grandparents always seemed like an adventure. Granddad was an oracle of wise and funny stories - some of which we were warned should not be repeated to our parents, while Nan seemed to have endless supplies of home baked jam tarts in old biscuit tins.
Cheese footballs remind me of Christmas at my other grandparents. They always had the most amazing goodies at Christmas time - god knows where they got them from - I have never seen half of them again. Things like marsh mallows coated in coconut flakes, and huge boxes of every liquorish candy you could imagine (I think we had family that worked in the liquorish factories). I remember the cheese footballs though - and my Aunt still living with her parents at that point, being quite the pretty young thing, and eating all the damn footballs. Being six years old at the time I wasn’t really in a position to fight her for them.
Various songs and pieces of music place me at too numerous places and times to start reminiscing about now - although while listening to the radio I will often relate to W the significance of whatever we are listening to in terms of some long forgotten memory.
Where am I going with this?
I just think it’s weird - and perhaps wonderful - that our memory can store so much junk. We have so much stored away that we’ve forgotten we remembered. Now and again, we will taste something, smell something, or hear something, and BANG - it all comes flooding back.