thanks to the heavenly smells of Aesop I was lead by the nose (sorry) to designer Kate McLean’s site of sensory maps, a little gem in internet land worth checking out.

her smell maps of various cities brought back memories of travels in distant countries, where the smells, rather than the sites or the people, really are the first thing that assaults your senses and remain the last vestiges of a dim memory many years later.

earlier this morning on my walk to work I passed through a particularly pungent area of the Cross and was taken back to the streets of Raval in Barcelona, where shadowy dank lanes, sweaty bodies, food scraps from la boqueria and rubbish as old as the cobbled streets have seeped into every wall and surface to create a miasma of smells that is the definition of dirty beautiful. In my mind/memory anyway.

it made me think of the smells that characterise my daily walk through Kings Cross to and from work, a walk I could do almost with my eyes shut, all I’d need was a good sniff to know where I was at.

off the train and the exit from the station is a stifling assault, hot smells coughed up from the bowels of the underground tunnels, leading out into the main strip of the Cross, an area populated by addicts whose daily shower and hygiene routines have been abandoned in their constant search for the next hit.

cheap eateries for backpackers emit cooking smells that should turn away even seasoned travellers, while the crammed, sweaty, airless internet cafes don’t seem to discourage anyone from entering and adding to the milieu of body odours.

there’s the unmistakable fries from McDonalds, overly-Lynxed bouncers out the front of the strip clubs, exhaust fumes from the resident motor bikes.

once you get to the corner at the Sugarmill the smell of booze is pertinent. Go a few more steps and Lankelly Lane offers the first enticing food smells, wafting up from the pizza place, Wilburs and LL, among others.

pass on and you catch a whiff of sheep’s wool and leather from the tourist shops, then round the corner towards the fountain and you’re again assaulted, this time by the sickly sweet smell of Andersen’s ice cream. At times this is countered by the soapy detergents used to clean the fountain across the street.

while none of this ‘scent map’ may appeal to anyone else, as a local I know it as my way back home and each step will be stored in my memory for years to come; to be unlocked at some future time when I’m living in the suburbs and catch a whiff of something old, unwashed and alcoholic, and remember the good old days.