In my latest Newsletter I wrote about asking for signs that would give us direction and I have been amazed at the response. Since I published it, I have received quite a few messages that you had asked for a very specific sign and voila, there it was. One lady asked that she see something purple. Five minutes later, and in answer to her question, she pulled out of her drive and a purple bus drove past. Personally I have never seen a purple bus but as I always say God and Gran move in mysterious ways and this could not have been clearer, however the answer to my request for a sign was slightly more convoluted to say the least.
I was a bit stuck about a subject for this blog and so last night when I went to bed, I asked for some help about what to write. I was very sleepy, you know the sort of thing when your book keeps falling on your nose and waking you up, but as soon as I turned off the light, ping! Wide awake. After quite some time I got up, had some warm milk, read for a couple of hours, hopped back into bed, lay down and closed my eyes and … ping! Eyes wide open. Now I do occasionally suffer from insomnia, but by the time we got to 4.30am, I really was getting a bit brassed off. The time had come to have a strict word with the angels, and as I was lying there, the best cure for insomnia came into my mind. Proust’s In Remembrance of Things Past. I know that dear old Marcel is highly revered but I have tried to read him in both French and English and have never managed to get past Page 8 without nodding off. Now as far as I was concerned, it was all very well telling me how to cure my sleeplessness but it was a fat lot of good without the answer to hand. By this time the angels were doing a bit of head shaking and obviously thinking I was slightly obtuse, but then I realised what they were trying to say. The only thing I had read and probably the most famous bit of the book is how the smell of baking madeleines took him straight back to his childhood.
This was my answer. Of all the five universally recognised senses – well you and I know there is a sixth – smell is perhaps the most evocative. When I fry anything in olive oil I am immediately transported back to my kitchen in the South of France and if you blindfolded me, put me on a plane and landed me at Nice Airport I would immediately recognise it from the mix of sunshine, flowers, olive oil and Gauloises.
But it is not only in this world that scent plays such an important part. The spirit world also likes to makes their presence felt or pass on messages through the medium, if you will forgive the pun, of smell. When I lived in England, I lived in a house parts of which were over five hundred years old, so you can imagine the number of spirits that had accumulated there over the years. They mostly confined themselves to the older part of the house, but one room in the newer section definitely had a ghostly visitor with a penchant for plonking himself down heavily on the bed in the middle of the night much to the consternation of its occupant. He also liked to lurk on the half landing and I always knew when he was around because there was a very definite odour of cigar smoke mixed with old fashioned hair oil. He didn’t do any harm except give the occasional house guest a fright in the night, but I was always aware when he was around.
Very often when David and I are watching television we will smell cigarette smoke, but never at the same time. Neither of us are smokers and my daughter is banished to the great outdoors when she is here from the UK, but the smell is almost overpowering. I think it is my father who had been a heavy smoker. He is not around me very much, probably because my mother is still keeping him on a tight rein on the other side, but that is his way of letting me know he is still here. When Gran is around I often get a hint of 4711 Eau de Cologne, but the most distinctive odour I get is Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew. Sorry Estee, I love all the rest of your stuff and am one of your greatest fans, but this is one perfume I cannot bear. Even the slightest whiff makes my eyes water, but somehow, when I am really worried or sad, the scent is overpowering and it is a sign that things will get better very quickly. I don’t know why it is this perfume as I only know one person who used it and she is still alive and kicking. It must just be spirit’s way of sending me a specific sign.
So when there is an unexplained something in the air, take note of it. It could well be spirit’s way of sending you a message.
Love this. I often encounter the strangest smells, both pleasant and unpleasant and while i understand there is a meaning to them, I’ll be damned if i can ever work out what the message actually means…. lol 😜