Pongs

I am feeling thoroughly recovered.

Well, almost thoroughly recovered. The peculiar intensity that has assailed my sense of smell has not disappeared, and I have been spotting new and surprising aromas all day.

I puzzled over this.

I was not at all ill today. We slept late this morning, and I woke to a feeling which could not exactly be described as hearty, but which was nevertheless more or less energetic, with all dizziness and nausea disappeared.

I settled on plain bread and honey for breakfast, and for our picnics I used the mildest cheese we had in the box, because even the smell of our customary Extra Mature Cheddar With Special Tongue Burning Sensation was more than I could contemplate.

It is very peculiar.

I had my usual squirt of perfume last night before I went to bed, and the scent was so overwhelming that I could not sleep, and had to go and wipe it off.

It is the oddest experience I have had for a long time. Mark came into the bedroom last night to find me standing beside the bed, just inhaling the distracting wooden odour of the furniture. I had a blissful walk around the park this morning, breathing in the mingled aromas of clover and soil and the acid, late summer, wafts of the ageing oak leaves.

The tomatoes in the conservatory are so powerfully green and salty as to be practically unbearable, and I had to leave the outside door open to the garden.

I am currently drinking tea from my thermos-cup, but the pleasure in it is spoiled by the discovery that the lid has a faint scent of mould about it. I have never noticed this before, and inspection has not revealed even the tiniest speck, but my new super-power has made it completely un-ignorable, and I am going to have to dump it in caustic soda before I can use it again.

This must be what it is like to be the dogs.

The mystery was solved when I talked to a friend of mine this evening, who remarked that it sounded exactly like the assault on your senses that happens when you are expecting a baby.

This was a light-bulb moment.

Obviously I am not expecting a baby, what an entirely ghastly idea. From nappies to school fees to driving tests, I can’t imagine a less desirable sequence of events.

However, I have lately started on a course of medication provided by the doctor to help stave off the advent of old age, which might or might not work, and which consists largely of substances that interfere with your hormones.

I looked it up on the mighty Internet at work this evening, and discovered, to my surprise, that indeed, lots and lots of takers of these tablets, obviously one hesitates to call us women in this age of gendered genderiness, and you never know what sort of fashionable linguistic pedants might be reading. Anyway, we all seem to be reporting colossally increased olfactory sensitivity, around the second month of usage.

This fits me perfectly. The mighty Internet thinks that it might be because we are beginning to absorb zinc better.

It looks as though my nasal super-power might be here to stay. I am not sure what I feel about this.

Mostly what I feel is a determination to bath the dogs very soon.

It is going to save me a fortune on expensively super-strength cheeses, coffee and leaf tea. I put half of the normal amount of tea into tonight’s teabag, and it was still just fine.

I do not know if it lasts. I did not read that far before I had some customers, after which I forgot.

The picture is a colossal caterpillar that Lucy found in the conservatory this morning. We were quite astonished by it, and a bit alarmed, since it looked as though it might be a man-eater.

We ejected it to the garden anyway. I hope it does not eat any birds.