I’m hoping this will be a comment-heavy post. I think we’ve all experienced what I want to talk about, but I can’t remember anyone discussing it before. So off we go!

‘Ruined aromas.’ By that, I mean when a favourite (or at least pleasant) scent has been destroyed in your heart/mind/nose forever by an association that you just can’t break.

My examples that made me write this:

Back in my mid-twenties, I used to really like a certain spray air freshener. Forget what it was, something totally artificial and weird. Cranberry-mulberry or some shit like that. Thankfully, nothing that is found in nature after what happened to ruin it forever for me. In any case, I liked it, and bought it for light use at home – to cover smoking stink, dirty cat litter wafts, and various and numerable dog-smells.

Until…. someone bought it for use in the bathrooms at work. Now, while our own poo doesn’t smell of roses (if it does, you should see your doctor or change your diet), the smell of a stranger’s shit is just plain disgusting. The smell of a stranger’s shit with half a can of air freshener sprayed on top is worse. Oh so very much worse when that spray is familiar and a scent you used to) like. I tried to enjoy it again at home, and the smell-memory just wouldn’t leave me. Tossed in the bin – and you all know I hate wasting anything.

More recently, we got some lemon-scented antibacterial cleaning spray. It smelled nice; a light lemon scent.

Then the dog shit all over the spare room for two days and our only cleaner had a nice, light lemon scent. Let me say that the two odours didn’t combine well, and now I can’t use the stuff at all anymore without imagining that I also smell dog diarrhoea. You can also thank me for not describing in detail the visuals I also recall on smelling this particular cleaning product.

My disgust seems to center around poo. Hmmm.

While I probably border on being a super-taster, and super-smeller, I am sure that this has happened to you, too. Let’s hear it, and remember you can tell me all the really gross stuff and it will be fabulous!