Saint du Barrys and smells

We're about to be covered by a blanket of orange blossom in the air, thick enough to assume that if you put out your hand, you'll actually touch something. It's the strongest signal of spring that we get. On the cold winter days, I believe that I can smell snow, when the wind whirls from the white crags of the Cederberg, or the sea, although it's sixty kilometers away to the west, when the west wind blows. The air changes in respect of olfactory qualtiy, from season to season. You can smell what kind of a day it's going to be, as it gets lighter and the birds start earlier and earlier. The orange blossom isn't negotiable: you have no choice but to breathe it in. My favourite is jasmine: for that I have to walk over to the parking bays, and the wall against which the jasmine grows. It's like a high legato violin note above the darker volume of the orange blossom orchestra. Open the front door in the morning, and you get the full orchestral hit: spring-cool air, orange blossom heat to come, the jasmine note, and birds joining the choral spaces. I'm waiting for frangipani: Joan planted one some years ago. It suffered somewhat when the municipal meter-reader came from the back, and snapped off branches to defend himself against our guest-house friendly dogs. But it's coming on, and will in due course add it's own chord to the sharps and flats in Saint du Barrys octave of smells.

Step beyond the gate, and you'll pick up one of two friendly fire smells: either the warm neighbourly hearth-fire from ourselves or Uncle Phil next door, when it's winter, or the slightly more smoky smell from the pizza oven at Olifanthuis restaurant, which the locals still call the pizza huis, although the menu is a la carte as well as pizza. That's more of a summer smell.

If it's one of our quieter days, and we've had a walk in the car, and have checked the town's perimeter, I usually respond to braai smells by going into competition. If that's peri-peri chicken, I'll reply with Spur wings. Some over-drenched, overdone hunk of mutton chop? The clear answer is fillet, no basting, on an open fire at just the right heat, and no flames yet, sending out a pure aroma guarranteed to produce salivation up to four hundred meters, six if the breeze helps to carry the message.

This is no competition for what strolls out of the kitchen when Joan prepares dinner for guests: fresh bread, oxtail, chilli con carne, lasagne, oven-baked aubergine, accompanied by garlic, olive oil and followed by brandy tart, all of this creating an exciting smudge that excites the palate and reduces the mind to nothing but anticipation.

The home-smells of thatch. Guest rooms and our own upstairs rooms have rafters that are open to thatch. Each room has a different smell of thatch, emphasized when the wind blows. Lead me into each room with my eyes closed: here's a dry touch of sunlight combined with tall grass on a slope: room five. This one has a rich yet soft touch and I have to think of mountains on the horizon and a river close by: must be room three. These identities of thatch become invitingly strong as the wind picks up. What goes into the nose settles in the chest, and the feeling is one of nostalgia, almost too much, at times.

And of course, depending on the time of year, varying intensities of drying rooibos. Sometimes just on the edge of the breeze, sometimes standing squarely over the town, this presence is ubiquitous. After eleven years of living here, I think my body has accepted rooibos at a cellular level. I think I I have extra rooibos mitochondria helping my identity to progress beyond known things. They say animals use the sense of smell far more acutely than humans.

I believe that I sniff the air much more than I did earlier on in life, and that I am even excited at the messages I receive. That's the equinox passed; that's four o' clock in the afternoon; it will rain in less than an hour; we're more than halfway through Spring; today we have to light a fire; the snow has defintiely melted; the wind has at this very instant changed. This week we should go to find crayfish, a sauvignon blanc and a sandy beach.

And when we get home the thatch might say that a quiet couch and a book are called for, or, the pizza house may offer another invitation, as the evening progresses, just a small one, maybe the Adriatic with fresh avo as it comes out of the oven. And just because life is a celebration, I should be indulgent enough to at least breathe in over a wee bite of the Glenlivet before tasting it.

And the last one, that many may not ever experience: burying your nose in the back feathers of an African Grey. I won't attempt a description. It's another curious recognition that happens not in the head but in the chest. Perhaps that's what the animals try to tell us.