The Guardian - Life & Style • Feb. 4, 2026, 4:45 p.m.
We don’t have a single verb to express smelling something nice. Welsh and Croatian, by contrast, are never caught short when something fragrant gets right up your nose I remember the first time I remembered a smell.
This was remembering to the extent that it stopped me in my tracks, taking me back to a specific moment, a specific place and a specific feeling. The smell was that of a bike shop.
Mainly rubber, with notes of oil and plastic and a strong hint of sheer excitement. In that instant I was about 10 years old, in Bache Brothers Cycles at Lye Cross, near Stourbridge, in the West Midlands.