The Smells Of Mallorca's Summer

"How the smell from a grill could spark up nostalgia." (Will Smith, aka The Fresh Prince, "Summertime".)

The evening air is a mixed grill: the charring from charcoal of meats and sardines, the bay leaves or sage tossed onto the coals, the marinades of paprika and cumin. Suspended over neighbourhoods is an invitation to succulence that never tastes quite the same as it does from a barbecue. The smell is the invitation. It hangs also over whole streets of restaurants, blending its aromas with curries and with the syrupy, oil-flamed egg of the pancake man.

These are the smells of summer.

Bacon frying in the morning. The accumulation of breakfast lingering outside a hotel. Chicken on a spit at a supermarket. The sobrasadas and other sausages of a delicatessen, bunched together in smoked and spiced clumps of charcuterie. The vinegar and oil of a Mallorcan salad and the garlic of aioli. Wet fish at the merchants or, for early birds, at the quayside. Melon and pineapple newly sliced.

A sniff of oak and caramel from a chilled white wine. Mint from a mojito. Coffee percolating on the stove. Dregs of San Miguel left in glasses overnight to go flat.

The raspberry of a mignonette, honeysuckle, the startling recognition of rosemary as you walk through a woods, and grass being cut while there is still a dew.

Vanilla-piped fragrance in a hotel lobby or the non-air-conditioned clinging of meat fat to the walls and atmosphere of a different hotel.

An old familiarity but a rarity, like that of British seaside; slimy green seaweed on flat rocks and the pervasive fishiness of sea. Coconut suntan lotion. The staleness of salt on a crusty beach towel that needs washing. And salt in the hair and on the skin. The cologne from a face and body freshener.

Chlorine from an over-active open-air swimming-pool. What may have been left in the swimming-pool.

Sweat and body odours. Trainers left on the terrace to be aired. Vomit outside a bar at three in the morning. Sewage from a cracked cesspit, pumped out by the Colis wagon and spewing onto the road. The general-rubbish wheely-bin before it gets collected. The garden-rubbish wheely with a few day's worth of mulching leaves. Fumes from buses, coaches, lorries or cars long past their MOT sell-by dates or long without regular maintenance.

The burnt sulphuric gas from the marshes in the wetlands, a peculiarly reassuring odour that sits in a still air like a bouquet of molasses from a brewery, captured by the misty ozone of an English autumn morning, or which is wafted by breezes as though they were carrying the smoke of a forest fire. And then there is also the smoke from a forest fire.

The gunpowder from a fireworks display. The petrol of flame-throwing demons. The respiratory-assaulting toxicity of deltamethrin sprayed from a Zum ant-killer can. The lavender of a loo's air freshener. The citronella of mosquito repellent. The ammonia of jellyfish treatment.

The damp wool after a burst of summer rain. The Alpine pine of a tiled floor freshly swabbed. The mango or apple of shower gel. Sheets drying on a washing line.

The pear drops of a hire car interior hopefully cleaned. The baking rubber of a hosepipe left in the sun. Cigarette smoke blowing across from the neighbour's terrace.

The cleanness of glossy print in an information centre. The collision of Armani, Givenchy and Chanel testers in a perfumery. The leather of a shoe, handbag and jacket shop.

Plastic lilos and footballs new from the shop. Pages of a novel to be leafed through for the first time. Sandwiches in foil when the cool box is opened. Diesel from the glass-bottomed boat brought in on a shorebound wind.

And there are more. The smells of summer. Mallorca's olfactory entertainment and nasal seduction. We are intoxicated by the sights of Mallorca, but we pay less attention to how the other senses are stimulated. The sounds of Mallorca could be for another time. For now, make the most of the smells of Mallorca's summer, while they and while it lasts.

And what are your smells of summer?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.