Wakey wakey!

I remember, when I was young, and by «young» I mean eleven years old, that a school chum showed me a small bottle of Smelling Salts. I had heard of Smelling Salts before. They were common place in old black and white films. It seemed every gentleman had to carry Smelling Salts on his person because you never knew when a woman would faint. It seemed to me that women dropped like flies whenever it became too hot or bad news was delivered to them. At least that was the impression I got from all the Hollywood films of the time. The only thing more confusing than women fainting everywhere was the stampede of Gentlemen whipping out their little vials of Smelling Salts to wave under the collapsed lady’s nose. “It’s a miracle!” I would say to myself, no sooner had the small opened bottle been placed directly under the unconscious nose, that the women would make an instant recovery and wake up.

I was allowed to sniff the Smelling Salts and, to put it mildly, it was horrible. In fact, I do not think I managed more than a quarter sniff before my head pulled away rapidly. It was hard to describe the smell but it was sharp and, well, very horrible indeed.

We never had Google back then, we had Encyclopaedias, which were big heavy books where everything was documented alphabetically. That meant going to a library to find out “stuff”. So as curious as I was to find out about Smelling Salts, I just could not be arsed to explore the library, and its books, to discover what it contained to make that “wake the dead” smell.

You’ll be pleased to know that I now know where the smell comes from. I found out by accident. OK, so it was not an accident at all. Indeed, it was a deliberate act, which seemed to have an element of planning to it. You see, it happened last night whilst I was asleep, fast asleep, unconscious if you will. Our smallest cat, Chelsea, she came into our bedroom and jumped up on our bed and decided to use my out stretched arm as her organic warm sleeping mattress. She straddled my arm, raised her tail and plonked herself down. Unfortunately, my head happened to be at the end of the arm where Chelsea’s arse was settling. The very instant I got a face full of cat’s arse I awoke.  That smell was the very equivalent of a gun going off in our bedroom. As I bolted upright, my eyes were wide open and my heart was pounding. This “fainting Lady” was awake, wide awake! Unlike the softly spoken women in the old black and white films asking, “where am I?” as they became conscious again, I knew exactly where I was because I had an angry cat sinking its teeth and claws into my flailing arm.

So I now know where Smelling Salts come from and I think it was a wise move to call it Smelling Salts. It just wouldn’t do, in polite society, whenever a young lady fainted, to be heard screaming, “Oh gosh no, the Mademoiselle has fainted, does anyone have a Cat’s Arse to wave under her nose?”