Sensory memory #3: Saturdays, public toilets and The Unpleasant Incident in M&S.

On some Saturdays in the late 70s and warly 80s, Mrs Russell (see previous post) would take me to town. Another reason Russy was bliss to hang out with was she did routines like a boss. Routines and sameness for most autistic people is a dream. You know what's going to happen, no surprises, relaxing loveliness. Smashing.

We'd get on the number 24 double decker (incidentally, Cardiff buses were the perfect shade of orange, my favourite colour). We'd sit upstairs in the top right seat. I can't remember what we'd do in town, but usually involved a visit to Cardiff Market, and always lunch in Howell's Department store. My lunch was a ham sandwich and orange squash. It was always quiet and dark and nice in there.

As a kid, I hated public toilets with a passion. My mum would go nuts if we were out as I'd have to be sometimes literally, forcibly, dragged into loos if she needed to go. I hated them so much. The smell would always make me retch, and I would try and hold my breath and run out as fast as possible. This also was true of the fish market end of Cardiff Market. Much to the amusement of my older brothers apparently. Mrs Russell and I would go into the loos in Howells, if we had to. They weren't so bad.

Unfortunately one particular Saturday we had to go to Marks & Spencer on an errand. It was the other end of town, and by the time we got there I needed a wee. I'm sure their toilets are pristine havens of cleanliness, but there was something about the loos there that made them The Worst. It wasn't a poo/wee thing, (although let's be fair, that's not going to help), it was something else additional that made it Really Bad.

So, one of my Worst Sensory Memories involved *having* to go into the toilets in M&S one one of my 'nice Saturdays' out with Russy.

The unfortunate post-script had poor Mrs Russell apologising effusively after I had been sick on a rack of suits in Menswear on the way out.

Dechrau: update

Having explored my least favourite textures, the felt itself isn't visually as successful as I want in invoking the sensory heebie-jeebies. So have been revisiting my notes and ideas. Really does feel a bit masochistic, especially rubbing unglazed porcelain together. Argh! I've got an idea that could be a winner but it involves a bit of out-sourcing. More on that as it happens! Happy sensory bits in the second word-piece, I promise!

Finally, for this brief update; I thought you might like to see a page of my notebook - note the references to things that some of you kind readers told me gave you the nails-down-blackboard shivers.

Sensory Memory #2: Love of my life

Mrs Russell, or as she is/was in my head 'my Russy', was Norah May Russell. Russy lived next door to us. She was my best friend, she took me to and from school, to Sunday School, gave me lunch (ham, spaghetti and mash please), was my nurse if I was off school poorly, endured me treating her home as an extension of my own and l loved her fiercely and absolutely. I still have to look at my memories of her side-long, or it wrenches me right in my centre that she is no longer here.

Here is Russy, holding me. Sometime in 1974. I was not a pretty baby.

My sensory memories of Russy are mostly:

Feel: Buttons. She had a red Politi's Rahat Lakoum tin filled with odd buttons, and to calm down, or if I was poorly I would play with them. I loved the sound and feel of them; silky, slippery and cool. Apart from the ones with fabric on them. They were put to one side as inferior!

Smell: Mrs Russell had deliveries from the Laundry Man, Mr Taylor, the grocer (he called me 'smiler') and the pop man. The pop man would bring Dandelion and Burdock sometimes, and that was epic. The smell of it is still very much a Happy Smell.

Feel: Special pillow and eiderdown. When I slept over, I got to use the special pillow, which was full of feathers and had a cover with pink daisies on. It was always cold and heavy when it came out of the cupboard and had the starchy cotton smell of Special Pillow. The eiderdown was deep pink and silky and filled with feathers and weighed a ton. Going to bed was a squashy delight.

Smell: Lily of the valley flowers, which she loved.

Smell: Silvo polish; sitting on the stairs and watching her cleaning the big mirror in her hall.

Smell: Coffee and Nice biscuits. At 10.30 every morning, Mrs Russell would call upstairs to her lodger, another elderly lady "Mrs Phillips, coffee!" and they'd have coffee in the front room. It was made in china cups and she poured hot milk onto the coffee. The smell meant soon I'd get a Nice biscuit and a glass of orange squash.

Smell/Feel: The Things on the Mantelpiece (not strictly supposed to touch but frequently explored). A brass frog ashtray/match holder. The hinge was broken and he was held with a safety pin. He smelled of cold metal. A china statue of a boy, and a girl. I didn't touch these because I was scared of breaking them. A butter dish with a glass lid. Sometimes I would secretly scrape the butter and taste it. We didn't have butter at home, we had margarine, which seemed a comparitive outrage. An unglazed white porcelain pot with little birds on a tiny tree on the lid. I hated the noise of the lid closing and feel of it but it smelled sweet.

Feel: I swear I can remember exactly how her hands felt, I can see where the veins on the back of her hands were, the shape of her knuckles and how her wedding ring moved on her hand when I held it.

Smell: Nivea cream, which she applied at night. Max Factor pressed powder in the morning. Imperial leather soap.

Wanting to feel. Mrs Russell had on her wall an embroidered picture of a house in a lovely garden, that she had done when she was younger. I always wanted to touch it, to feel how the stitches felt but of course, wasn't allowed and it was behind glass. We agreed we'd live in it one day. I remember asking for it because I loved it, but she said 'she would leave it to me', which was Not For Thinking About. One day in November 1985, she told me I could have it,which I thought was a bit strange. My mum (I am so grateful for this) got her to write on the back. Not long after ( I think it was a matter of days), she had a stroke. I assume she felt a premonition which is why she gave me the picture. She had to go into a nursing home after hospital as she could no longer walk, or many other things, unaided. She died on June 15th 1987. I have the picture, but it is wrapped up waiting for when I can look at it every day without my heart imploding. If you squint, I reckon you can see us together in the window.

I'm amazed how an unexpected sensory moment; a scent, a taste, a touch, a sound, can fling us into a different time and place and disconnect us from the present. Fittingly, my memories of Mrs Russell can be summed up by the Welsh word 'Hiraeth'. This is not necessarily a word I'll use inthe project, but is a fitting and unique word meaning a nostalgic sense of desire, of homesickness. By looking at some of my sensory memories during this project, I hope to get a better understanding of what these sensations can provoke. As always, I'd love to hear from you; here or at lydia@niziblian.com

What taste/smell/sound pulls at you?