The Right Smell

PAGES | 161119 Magic Tree

I stumbled upon a series of magic trees – Arbres Magiques – the cardboard scent diffusers you buy to customize your car with The Right Smell.

There’s a choice in scents, ranging from flowers to fruit to fresh water and if you want people outside the car to know you love your car too, then you choose the special I-love-my-car design tree, smelling of Black Pine 😉

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The choice of smells reminded me of the conversation I had with a fireman at 4 am last week.

I had called the police – urgent but not 911 – after waking up to the smell of fire, a smoky, wood burning fire, in the middle of the night.

The open window had let in a suspicious smell and after checking the house and the roof, I realized I would not sleep, so I called the police – yes it was that frightening. To hear if they maybe knew about a fire close by that I couldn’t see.

They forwarded my call to the fire station. A friendly fireman told me there was no activity in my area and that I should go back to sleep, close the window.

I did not sleep very well.

The next day I found out from neighbors A. it was the wood burning stove next door the neighbors B. had left in the hands of a group of paying guests. They had come home after midnight, noisy, and after hours of more noise they must have tried to light the stove, which didn’t go well: The room filling up with smoke, they must have opened the windows in the front, and so the smoke could climb up to my window, waking me up.

Smoke, a house on fire, is not the kind of smell for a magic tree.