h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Plasticine (used to play with it ++)
Poppy seed crusty bread (Saturday tea time treat)

Strange but interesting thread...! Book dust, cinnamon, Johnson's (sp?) baby shampoo, pancakes....

Back in the early 1970's... that weird purple ink that my school used to to copies of documents on pre-photocopier (can't remember the name though.. sorry!)

early learning centre clay (the grey stuff you didn't have to bake and that went all stringy when it dried)
plaster of paris from making models with my Nan
cut grass,
the smell of the river after it rained.

weatherproofed wood - we used to walk past a fence once a week, in a crocodile, on the way to the library (in Windsor)

the smell of a German Baker's van when they open the door and all the bread/cake/sweet smells waft out. I'm instantly 4 again.

Swarfega - that's the smell of my dad

a certain antiseptic smell, no idea of what it is, but it is the smell of my Grandparents' outside loo from when I was very small.

A blend of several smells, including:

1) Everything my mother was burning after doing gardening... I really loved to have some potatoes and at least one egg in the fire...

2) Can you imagine the smell of a complete floor nobody is living in? Left for the kids as a playground? I have no idea what the word for "Silberfischchen" is in english, but they had entered this floor a long time before me... anyway, it really had a special smell...

3) Fresh mint, just from our garden...

... and - missed it before - @ Mrs the wife: These pre-copier-smell... I still remember and love it!

The pre-photocopy copier was called a Gestetner (in Ireland). Silberfischen are silverfish in English.

For me the smell is floor wax used for polishing the linoleum.

Gestetner is the name of a company that used to make them (my dad used to work for them), but I think the machines were called 'duplicators'. I remember them from when I was at school. (Oops! Showing my age there! )

Certain charred smells still give me panic attacks, due I'm sure to the apartment building fires I was in as a child.

The smell of a freshly lit coal fire - it was the smell of walking home from school.

Fat Kelli said about WD40 and her dad. My dad was an engineer and smelled a bit like WD40 - his company car used to smell the same. Of course - now he has an office job it's not the same.

Liam.

I remember those "copiers" at school - I recall them as Roneotype machines - but the actual name (as opposed to the brand name) was a Multigraph Duplicator. The smell I associate with them is methylated spirits - they used it to clean them I think.

Other smells:
lavender (my grandma)
pipe tobacco (my grandpa)
cold cream (my great aunt)
pva (school) glue - eugh...fish!!
the seaside (Southend-on-Sea)

...this list is endless, so I'll just quit now I think

Somebody mentioned this smell on another thread, and I'd almost forgotten it existed. The smell of a hardware shop.

Also, the smell of Sherbet Fountains and tomato plants in a greenhouse, and Christmas trees.

hee hee
My old school still had one of those purple copiers in the late 80's. We called it the "ditto machine" and it was the last one still in use in the whole school district
In addition to that smell, I remember the very distinct smell of the "unscented" bug spray I used in the northwoods at summer camp, the smell of the lilac trees by my grandparents' house, the pungent smells of saurkraut, cabbage, and fish cooking in Grandma's kitchen, and that odd smelling perfume that my first grade teacher wore

Cheers!
--Raindawn

I think the purple ink copier was a Banda. Different smell from the Gestetner types.
From primary school(where duplication was done on an old Remington typewriter with carbon paper) the smell of ink in the inkwells, the smell of the outside loos, the smell of the hessian mats used to pad the hall or classroom floors for "gym" classes, custard at lunch time - it came in huge drums, liquorice.
Eau de cologne for headaches, menthol and wintergreen for stuffy noses,warm port for sore throats, kaolin poultice for everything.
My grandmother smelt of Devon Violets, my aunts of Californian Poppy and Wild Fire (not really up to Camus' standards)

My school had a purple copier machine that was in use in 1995, they had a photocopier ther too of course but the my French teacher couldn't be bothered to walk across the school to it so he just kept the old one in his stock room.

smell? i know. s**t!

I'll take that 1995 and raise you to 1997...except in my school it was a physics teacher who used it to save her budget.