Making ‘scents’ of London

London is a treat not just for sightseeing but for all five senses, as Paul Gorman discovers.

The clatter, clatter, shudder, judder of the jerking Underground train is sensory-overload enough.

But close your eyes and listen to the five different languages being spoken in your carriage at the same time.

And then there’s the smell. Always that same smell. A cocktail of electricity and burning dust, and the brakes. Perfume or aftershave, too.

This time, there’s another ingredient mixed in. Something slightly familiar — not at the top of the unpleasantness scale but pretty powerful all the same.

Wet dog!

Not quite sure which breed it is. It’s well-disposed enough, looking for pats and new friends on the Circle Line between Gloucester Rd and South Kensington.

But it’s not exactly small. It’s a big wet dog that, like the rest of us, has been out in the teeming rain and is now steaming invisible, unfathomable vapours from its coat into passengers, clothes and the train’s upholstery.

This is a sight and smell one hardly saw and registered on the Tube until recent years. You’d have had to cross the Channel to France to see dogs riding the buses and trains.

The Brits have always loved their dogs. But in their place. And that was not whizzing around with the bowler-hatted, pin-striped brigade doing The Times’ crossword tens of metres beneath London.

Travel posters and brochures are always full of exhortations to "see the sights" or "enjoy sightseeing with us".

Focusing exclusively on what you might see when you visit a new place is understandable, but it overlooks the visceral reaction many experience when they hear, or smell, or touch, or taste what somewhere different has to offer.

There aren’t many tourist agencies which sell destinations by suggesting visitors "sniff the smells" or "enjoy smell-sniffing with us". But maybe they should. Smell is the only one of the five human senses which triggers nostalgia, because it diverts around the part of the brain that deals with conscious thought and links directly with long-term memory.

The smell-fest starts as soon as you land at Heathrow. Once the plane doors are open, the oddly sweet scent of thousands of litres of jet fuel creeps in. Soon, walking along the seemingly endless Heathrow corridors, another smell takes over — curry powder. It’s difficult to determine which spice is dominating, but it is probably cumin.

Heathrow generates its own shimmering blue haze. On top of the smell of avgas are diesel fumes from tens of thousands of vehicles buzzing along the ring roads and accessways.

Back on the Tube again, there’s the piquant aroma of more hot dust and sparks. A young woman is sitting with a small puppy on her lap. Not far from the station, a beagle was sheltering under the umbrella its owner had placed on the wet paving slabs.

There are so many dogs out and about now, of all sizes and shapes, wherever you go. Not just on trains, but on buses, in shops, cafes, libraries. The Covid-19 lockdowns are probably the cause. So many lonely, isolated people deciding to get a poochy companion.

Turn on the television and there are more dogs. The annual competition that is Crufts is being screened live on Channel 4, with all sorts of interviews and doggy facts and figures between competition events. It’s hard to imagine any other country would devote several days of coverage to wall-to-wall dogs. But they are gorgeous.

Unfortunately, my love affair with British dogs and fascination with the country’s distinctive odours collided rather unhappily on the leafy, slippery pavements of Newbury.

I got in my cousin’s car and thought I could smell something foul. Fearing the worst, I sat with only the heel of my right shoe on the floor and tried not to move. When I hopped out, I checked — yes, to my horror and disgust, a huge dog turd was squashed well into the tread.

It was not the kind of evocative bouquet I wanted to divert around the part of my brain dealing with conscious thought so it could create an instant memory for my long-term.

Rubbing the shoe exceedingly vigorously back and forth in the longish grass made a bit of a difference. I scrubbed it hard on a shoe scraper and an old doormat outside a shop. I spent the rest of the day looking for puddles and deliberately walking through the deepest ones, getting some pretty odd looks.

Happier smells were also in the offing though, mostly food-related.

What could be a more British whiff than the one emanating from the local fish and chippery? The sharp crackling of the frying foods accompanied by the warming acidic tang of vinegar drifting down the high street on a cold, wet night. Then trying to separate the vinegar-congealed chips at the bottom of the paper bag.

Down the road at The White Bear pub, the rich scent of beef and ale pie with mushrooms and gravy hits you as you walk in the door, and your glasses instantly steam up.

Smells aside, the other four senses are also in overdrive, even if they fail to tickle the nostalgia bone the same way.

A rainy lunchtime in central London offers many sensory delights when it comes to touch. The points of umbrellas nearly taking your eyes out walking the 20-minute stretch from Covent Garden to Piccadilly Circus and up Regent St. The slipperiness of the paving slabs and manhole covers, the water dripping heavily off the canvas shop awnings and making it tricky to walk the right line and not get bombarded.

Gingerly down through the mass of humanity and across the glassy, clattering tiles to the Tube platforms. That hot gust of wind exhaling through the tunnel ahead of the train. In the carriage, the ticklish woven-pile moquette on the seats (memories of sitting on them wearing shorts as a child), and the feel of the glossy, slick plastic hand grips for those left standing. "Mind the gap!" the announcement swells and echoes as we approach the next station.

There’s sights aplenty, of course. Cheeky squirrels running across the soggy grass of Green Park, the swan whisperer by the Serpentine in Hyde Park, Westminster Abbey suddenly appearing round a corner, fox cubs in the street, community constables with Tasers (or were they revolvers?) walking the beat in Camden, green Wellington boots being put on in the carparks of stately homes.

Closer to home, there’s the curious sight of a quiet bungalow in the middle of Ruislip where the Russian spies, the Krogers, operated from until they were caught in 1960. What would London Metroland lover and former poet laureate the late Sir John Betjeman have made of the Cold War coming to suburbia like this?

You can still see the spot where the "doodlebug", a German V1 rocket, landed in the next street to my great aunt’s house on a quiet summer morning in June 1944, killing seven people and destroying houses at that end of The Greenway. The cracks in the walls and ceiling of her hallway were still there in the 1970s when us kids used to play war and jump on the top of the concrete air-raid shelter in the back garden.

Reminders of World War 2 remain if you look hard enough. A memorial in Chiswick marks where the first V2 rocket exploded in September 1944, killing three. Small machine-gun nests, known as pill-boxes, remain dotted around the countryside. 

When it comes to London and the sense of taste, it is wrapped up with these memories of a war which ended a mere 20 years before I was born. 

Saturday evening tea at Auntie Ada’s with rock cakes, corned beef or Spam sandwiches, or roasted hearts or something which the grown-ups called brawn, an awful tasting jellied concoction of goodness-knows-what. And always the reply to the incessant questioning of what’s for tea: "Bread and dripping." 

But what are the senses to make of those English winter days when all colour seems to have been exported to more exotic places? 

The clouds are shades of grey, the gnarly trees black, the muddy, flooded fields silvery-grey, grass and hedges dark greeny-grey, wet bricks dark brown. You’re crying out for a bright red car to come into view. 

How do you know you are even still alive? 

The fifth sense, hearing, comes to the rescue. The crows are cawing their melancholy cry, trains whoosh somewhere in the distant mist, circling planes make a muffled mechanical rumble up beyond the clouds. 

Just as well. A flash of sunlight would have blinded.