Deja vu part 1

I opened the window to a playground heavy with Mist, when I left the flat yesterday, my baby girl was wearing a thick heavy baby coat (her elder sister's) and a hand knitted cap. It was the perfect autumn day and it smelled so...very...familiar.

It smelled of English Autumn, of chestnuts, falling leaves, Bonfire Night, crumble and custard and butternut squash soup, of milk men and school uniforms.

It smelled of England, there is no where else in the world with this smell, not any morning in the US, on the mainland continent of Europe, in Jamaica or even Scotland.  This is England and England has it's own smell.

I took the red double decker to the hairdressers, located in a Victorian terrace, the kind of place which has a cold, high ceiling lavatory. Exactly the kind of lav which used to always have a moth flying around it when I was a child. Hateful wretched things, they would perch up by the light, intimating me while I quickly rushed what I was doing so the Moth would decide then to fly at my face to protect his territory...that was my childhood in various English houses as a child.

Then I walked to the high street, I went to a bakery, I haven't been inside a traditional English bakery in quite a while, it was lovely, there was so much to choose from, all the various tarts and cream slices being my favourites (though I decided to abstain for calorific reasons) then I went across the street to buy some Pears soap for my mum (looks like she forgot I have a soap thing going on but never mind!).

Yesterday had England stamped all over it, I felt that thread of English connection from early days in Kent, teenage dreams in Chingford and adult business in the City. Sometimes it is easy to forget how special a place is whilst you live in it.