What tastes, sounds and smells do you miss from yesteryear?

I remember my mum buying me Hartnell "In Love" talc in a pink plastic heart and also a tin of talc in a bright green and yellow tin. I wish I could remember who made it as I really liked it

Estee Lauder 'Youth Dew' is a perfume I can't stand, primarily because it's so strong and musky but also because it reminds me of when I was engaged at the age of 18.
My then fiance's mother gave me a bottle of it one Christmas, which was nice of her, but she disapproved of me marrying her son (quite rightly as it turned out, we broke up six months after that, thank goodness) so I was always a bit anxious around her and just a sniff of it can make me feel anxious all over again.

felice

4711 Cologne, last year when DGS and I were out walking an elderly lady smelt nice as she walked past.
DGS said she smelt nice, she heard him and smiled saying 4711.

4711 was my gran’s answer for anyone not well. It came in hard form like a round stick as well as in cologne in a lovely bottle. We use to buy it for her and we liked it too. For perfume at home where money was short there was Evening in Paris or my mother talked about California Poppy from Woolworth’s.
Then we moved upmarket to Primitive and Mugaet (my favourite and probably spelt it wrong).

The other day, at a bridal shower, I ate a small almond cake. The taste transported me back to my childhood, as our mom used to make all our birthday cakes and she always put almond extract in the frosting. DELICIOUS.

GagaJo

Isn't that rain smell called petrichor?

Is it?

Ah, I've looked it up, but it applies more to rain on vegetation covered ground. I'm thinking of the smell when light rain hits a very hot road... I wouldn't call it pleasant, t's just somehow reminiscent of childhood.

Isn't that rain smell called petrichor?

The smell of fresh bread. We had a local bakery near where we lived and the smell sometimes filled the air in the morning. Then we bought its produce at the local grocers shop,it smelled (and tasted) delicious. Bread doesn't smell (or taste) Like that any more.

An odd one, but the smell of rain on dry roads after a long hot spell.

Apple Blossom perfume by Helena Rubenstein.

The sound of a manual lawn mower.

Instant Whip.

Papermonster I was going to say exactly the same thing - the smell of what I think was coal tar soap in my grandparents' bathroom.

My granddad used to bring me chocolate covered honeycomb on a stick wrapped in polka dot waxed paper

I lived in a brewery town years later. A bit like the Macintosh factory, you could tell from the smell what part of the process they were at! Yeasty.

My gran always had Imperial Leather soap in the bathroom, and every time I smell it somewhere it immediately reminds me of her.

I simply miss 'taste' nothing is the same now.

Californian Poppy was a fragrance from my youth, as was Apple Blossom - would I find them too sickly now?

At Christmas we were allowed a Babycham or a Snowball to drink.

I loved the dark wooden counters at Woolworths with the little partitions between the separate items.

Downstairs at the Nottingham Co-Op there was a 1950s style milk parlour and I loved a Knickerbocker Glory. Also the little booths where you could listen to the latest pop records.

How did that post half way through?!

You never knew what was inside the chocolate outside.

GagaJo

Oh yes, NfkDumpling! I remember that chocolate smell too. We had a school trip around the factory once. To begin with, we were very good. By the end of the tour, we were nicking handfuls of chocolates from the ladies sorting trays!

My DGF knew someone there and gave us DC big bags of mis-shapes whenever he saw us. Miss those!

Ali08

#Tar, like someone said about the steamrollers doing the roads.
#Black grease, my dad drove a lorry and he'd come in smelling of it. I was actually in Stowmarket about 2-3 years ago and as we were walking into 'Spoons we passed a flatbacked lorry unloading and I got a whiff of the grease and just stopped to smell it for a few moments, until I saw one of the guys looking at me quite strangely. I just said, "Gotta love that smell of grease!" And dashed in to 'Spoons.
#Freshly mowed grass.
#Palma Violets perfume. Used to come with little teddy bears.
#My mums homemade rice pudding. It is the ONLY thing I'd eat the skin off, but dad and I shared it!
#Freesias.
#Walking through the green market in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and smelling the coffee beans, even tho I hate coffee.
#The swimming pool, before they started putting in excessive chlorine.
#The old bluebell wood.

@GrandmaRosie
I'm glad you didn't say 'aqua tofana'!!
??

I hated the smell of brewing though in Newcastle.

I miss the smell of a salumeria in Italy.

I miss the sound through my open bedroom window of my father mowing the grass on a summer evening

Mollygo

The Banda machine! On work experience I often did preparation for staff. That machine gave off the most wonderful fumes and exercised your arms. Modern copiers age great, but odourless.

Oh the dreadful Banda machine. I only had to approach it to get covered in ink.

Oh yes, NfkDumpling! I remember that chocolate smell too. We had a school trip around the factory once. To begin with, we were very good. By the end of the tour, we were nicking handfuls of chocolates from the ladies sorting trays!

Eating raw peas from the pod, while sitting in the garden watching my grandad. Sweet and crunchy.

The cool of the trees and the smell of the earth in the deserted undergrowth around the Norfolk Broads. Such beautiful scenery and completely empty. Amazing that I was allowed out to wander around, alone there at only 10 or 11.

The tree outside my bedroom window, which occasionally would have an owl in it. With the window open at night, the sound of the branches moving in the breeze was so soothing.

I'm another who misses not only the smell of proper greasy pink Germolene but also its healing powers. My DM used it on everything - minor burns, scratches, bites, bruises. Just the smell soothed.

Also the Coalite which the coalmen used to lug up three flights to our flat coal shed on the landing. I knew when my DM had arrived as she opened the shed door to inhale deeply of the smell before she knocked on the door and came in.

My DF's Weaver Brand pipe tobacco.

And the smell which enveloped much of the centre of Norwich form Macintosh's chocolate factory. Now a shopping mall.

felice I am wearing 4711 as I write. I always use it in the summer months. it smells so fresh.

Trisha57 I was with you all the way - until you got to the spinach water. Yuk.

The lovely tarry smell of a coal fire. And the smell of the biscuit factory - Chiltonian, in south London where my grandparents lived and I started life. Then Huntley and Palmers in Reading, where I was at secondary school.

I love the smell of Dettol which can still be bought, which was used for cuts and a drop in the bath to keep us clean.

When we were kids we used to stand outside a local sawmill to smell the newly cut wood. That was a fantastic smell.

I remember with great affection my Mum’s little black bottles of Coty L’aimant. Creamy perfume with a little pink applicator. She used to put a little drop of water in when it was finished to be sure she scraped out the last drop.

I was cast back to my childhood days just recently when I passed a very elderly man sitting on the seafront smoking a pipe. My Dad was a pipe smoker when I was a child and I used to sit on the arm of his chair watching the ritual of flaking the tobacco and filling and lighting his pipe. Then he enjoyed a good old puff with me on his knee. No concerns about passive smoking then!

Pink Germolene, @Hellogirl1, definitely not the same now. Nor is Savlon quite the same smell.
#Zinc & Castor Oil that our mum used for nappy cream etc. I loved that smell!

#Tar, like someone said about the steamrollers doing the roads.
#Black grease, my dad drove a lorry and he'd come in smelling of it. I was actually in Stowmarket about 2-3 years ago and as we were walking into 'Spoons we passed a flatbacked lorry unloading and I got a whiff of the grease and just stopped to smell it for a few moments, until I saw one of the guys looking at me quite strangely. I just said, "Gotta love that smell of grease!" And dashed in to 'Spoons.
#Freshly mowed grass.
#Palma Violets perfume. Used to come with little teddy bears.
#My mums homemade rice pudding. It is the ONLY thing I'd eat the skin off, but dad and I shared it!
#Freesias.
#Walking through the green market in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and smelling the coffee beans, even tho I hate coffee.
#The swimming pool, before they started putting in excessive chlorine.
#The old bluebell wood.

@GrandmaRosie
I'm glad you didn't say 'aqua tofana'!!
??