Walking Bertie on Sunday morning, we crossed a field of freshly mown grass... the smell of it caused a huge emotional flashback to my youth when everyone would gather to do the haymaking. I'd be up on the back of the trailer with the job of stacking the bales as my dad, my brother and my brother-in-law tossed them up at me. Like brickwork, the first layer went in rows, then columns. Sometimes columns down the outside of the layer, rows in between. If you didn't stack them right, they'd all tumble off on the way back to the barn.
It's getting on for 40 years since I did the haymaking - eventually my dad replaced rectangular bales with those big tubular ones wrapped in plastic, and when that happened, I wasn't needed any more.
Amazing how much sensory memory was contained in the smell of that grass though, like a time machine taking me back to my youth in a way that a visual image just couldn't do. Never underestimate the power of your nose.
Being a sturdy type I did bale loading as a summer job for a couple of years. Minimal wage but the big cheese and pickle sandwich and glass of cider from the farmer's wife for lunch compensated for that to some extent.
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