Magical memory smell

There's a part of a road on my regular cycle route that's bordered by bushes and shrubs. The scent from the earth and the foliage hit me hard this week as it's the exact same scent of bushes and shrubs that I smelled once on a family holiday to Butlins in Filey.

Bear with me on this one, I promise it's going somewhere.

The smell took me straight back there. How odd is that? Maybe not that odd, I don't know, you tell me.  I was seven years old. I know this because my youngest brother was a baby and we had a chalet at Butlins.

It was morning and mam was frying bacon for sandwiches as dad and I got ready to pop to the campsite shop for some bits and pieces for breakfast. I remember dad asking mam something like: "What shall I buy?" and her reply was: "Oh, just get whatever you think." And that's when I realised my dad was magic. He was going to have to use the power of his very own mind to think about what to buy, without being told.  "Cor," I remember thinking. "I can't wait to grow up and be able to go to the shops and buy whatever I think". 

And so dad and I trooped to the shop through the Butlins park. It must have been mid to late August because that was always when we took our family fortnight holiday. And as we walked from the chalet to the shop, I remember breathing in a gorgeous smell of earth, flowers, trees, bushes and shrubs, all the time thinking how magic my dad was, because he had the super-power ability to buy whatever he thought.

And now, that same smell, that very same smell, returns to my life this summer.   Not every day and not very often. Maybe it's the scent after a rain storm, maybe it's the morning sun on the trees. Or maybe it's magic.
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