My father was a carpenter, meaning I have spent a great deal of my life surrounded by wood, saws, planes and chisels. Simply by living among sawdust and woodchips, you learn to distinguish the different smells of wood.
Years after my father retired, I was walking through the underbelly of a hospital when, completely by chance, I stumbled upon the maintenance room. The smell of that room enveloped me, travelling instantaneously through my olfactory mucosa, to the olfactory nerve and then the olfactory bulb which, after a swift analysis, directed it to my limbic system.
