From the Ashers - Stories from us, The Ashers
Home
BLOG
    Latest Blogs
    Beautiful Things
    Creativity
    Kids
    Family
    Food
    Hitwave Alison
    Life
    Music
    Weekends
    Writing
MEMBERS
    SECRET ASHER STORIES
    BECOME A MEMBER
    Login
    My Account
About Me
Contact Alison
From the Ashers - Stories from us, The Ashers
  • Home
  • BLOG
    • Latest Blogs
    • Beautiful Things
    • Creativity
    • Kids
    • Family
    • Food
    • Hitwave Alison
    • Life
    • Music
    • Weekends
    • Writing
  • MEMBERS
    • SECRET ASHER STORIES
    • BECOME A MEMBER
    • Login
    • My Account
  • About Me
  • Contact Alison
Tag:
queensland
Life

The Smell of Summer

19/12/2020 by Alison Asher 2 Comments

This time of the year the air gets too heavy to blow around all willy nilly and Septemberish, and some days I wonder if I’m breathing oxygen, or growing gills like Aquaman. I wake at 5am with the light and the heat, menopausal beadlets starting to form anywhere that skin touches skin- between boobs, at the backs of knees, between fingers. The mornings are hazy with the smoke of faraway fires and salt and the water attached to the air. Always the water.

This part of Queensland is impossible to inhabit if you don’t like moist. The word that sends distasteful shivers to napes of necks of women the world over, is our way of being for the next couple of months or so. And with it, the moist brings a smell. She smell that has become my smell of summer. 

Back in the olden days of my childhood, summer used to smell of holidays that stretched out like the Princess Highway mixed with Sunnyboys and chlorine and the hot wet concrete we would lay on, lizardlike to warm ourselves after a swim. 

Then in the less olden days of my teen-age, summer smelt of coconut oil basting crispy skin and lemon juice bleaching our hair, with a whiff of tobacco and a scratch of a Redhead from someone’s Mum’s stolen cigarettes. It smelt of furtive kisses and sweaty palms and wetsuits drying and the sharp acetic zest of resin as someone fixed a ding in their board.

In the modern era of my 20s, summer smells were a fetid mix of fresh beer and stale beer and tap beer and the tang of tins, mixed with the fusty cheese from last night’s pizza, still soaking into the cardboard box. All of that rolled into a smell of potential and enthusiasm as holiday jobs shifted into looming careers and those uni smells became things of the past.

In my early 30s summer smelt like home, as I exhaled into the arms of the safest man in the world, and inhaled security blended with promise of a future unexpected. The smells of proper coffee and dry-hot Melbourne tar, of salt from the bay mixed with the fumes of industriousness became the smell of all of my now summers.

Summer now is made up of frangipani and sugar cane, of distant ginger and those stupid little white flowers that wink from glossy hedges and make me sneeze. There’s a sensation of salt and heaviness, until the sky finally cracks and we bring out the stormbeers, cleansing the balconies and making way for the smell of the indolent days of sunshine. The smell is laced with sandy zinc cream and wet dogs and soggy towels and love. Always love. 

The best smell of all. 

Share:

Recent Posts

  • Of Course 20/09/2021
  • Waiting to Exhale 17/09/2021
  • Hey Rick, Bit Weird 15/09/2021
  • Somedays We Bop 13/09/2021
  • In Love With Love 31/08/2021
  • Homage to Carla, Part 2 26/08/2021

Blog Roll

  • Woogsworld
  • Styling You

Recommended Links

  • Chicks Who Click
  • Quest Chiropractic Coaching

Recent Comments

  • Alison Asher on Hey Rick, Bit Weird: “I love that Paul. That smile! (And daring you.. she was always the most daring wasn’t she?)” Sep 16, 09:48
  • Alison Asher on Hey Rick, Bit Weird: “OH Tan, I didn’t know you had the boots! I’m so pleased as I never wanted them to go to…” Sep 16, 07:30
  • Tania on Hey Rick, Bit Weird: “Love it. I have those bloody cowboy boots in my wardrobe and they will never leave my side. Just loved…” Sep 15, 22:29
  • PB on Hey Rick, Bit Weird: “My memory shifts between the intensity of her eyes when she spoke to me…..controlling me ,enveloping me, daring me ….to…” Sep 15, 21:49
  • Alison Asher on Hey Rick, Bit Weird: “Oh Trace. I’m so sorry to hear that. One foot in front of the other, ‘eh? Do you have a…” Sep 15, 18:42
  • Tracy K-S on Hey Rick, Bit Weird: “Good reflection for me on what has been a tough few weeks. A new friend was diagnosed with cancer today…” Sep 15, 18:35

View Blog Categories

  • Beautiful Things
  • Chiropractic
  • Creativity
  • Family
  • Food
  • Hitwave Alison
  • Inspo stuff
  • Kids
  • Life
  • Music
  • Secret Asher Stories
  • Travel
  • Weekends
  • Writing

© 2020 Alison Asher | Privacy Policy