They say smell is the most powerful sense for evoking memory. Probably true, I was 11 years old when we had an extension built on our old house, around the same time my next door neighbour decided to kill his wife. Smelling fresh plaster always reminds me of that.
Jack was my first best friend. As a youngster I used to galavant around my back garden. The hedge was in such a state of disrepair that I would wander in and out of next doors otherwise immacualate garden befriending it`s 70 something year old owner, Jack. Jack would sit on his bench smoking roll ups, regalling me with tales of the war and his career buliding airoplanes. Now and again he would take me to the betting shop, his favourite haunt. How else we spent our time is long gone from my memory, save for the fact that we did spend alot of time together.
His wife started to lose it about four years before they died. My mother worked locally as a social worker and came across Doris numerous times in her professional life, spending considerable time visiting her and looking after Jack whenever she was admitted to the local Psychogeriatric unit.
By 1990 Jack had had enough. His vision was failing considerably and it broke his heart to watch his wifes personallity wear away by the strain and destruction of demntia. It was on a Saturday night close to halloween that it happened. It had been as nice an evening a child could have asked for. We were entertaining close friends from Dublin, and after a nice meal I slept as soundly as only a care free child can.
The first sign of trouble occured around 9am the following morning. A community nurse knocked on our door, anxious that she could not arouse Jack of Doris whom she had come around to check on. My mother, brandishing a spare key to the house, accompanied the nurse next door. There she found Doris, dead in her bed, knocked unconcious and smothered. Jack was found hanging in the bathroom.
Although this is a powerful enough memory to have been evoked by a smell it is, save for the smell of my first loves favourite perfume, the only one that I can recall. My memory has been written to music, from my musical origins listening to the first "Thats what I call music" compilations through 14 years of overactive participation in acid house. Its as I sit here listening to a Paul Van Dyk mix from a Love Parade gone by that I feel compelled to revisit some of these memories and more importantly think about where I`m going from here.
Talk about how I`m going to get away from heroin. Talk about the day the music died.
