Not that I can be bothered to use it on the windows, like. No self-respecting bloke would admit to that. I just like to open the bottle for a sly sniff and then put it back. Why? I'm not sure. It does fill me with nostalgia and a homely safeness, I s
uppose. But mostly I just love the smell, the texture and the colour of the domestic product. So much so, that when I was a child, I drank a bottle of the stuff.
My mam was cleaning the windows one sunny day and when she turned her back for a second, the bottle was gone. I was found around the corner licking my lips with the empty plastic bottle in my hand. There was a panic, of course, and the doctor was sent for, but if I recall all I had to do was drink some milk. Turned out that the main ingredient of Windolene is chalk.
But Windolene is not the worst thing I've drank by a long shot. In fact, it was quite pleasant compared with the hooch one of the lads in the Forces brought back from Bosnia. It didn't actually smell that lethal, but when I lifted up the bottle for a closer inspection, it had left a perfect ring on the bar top as it stripped the thick old layers of varnish, worn smooth by generations of elbows, clean down to the naked wood. The vapour made your eyes water and it doesn't exactly fill you with confidence when you are warned not to spill any on your clothes as you raise the glass cautiously to your lips.
And it was his in-laws that brought the poteen over from Northern Ireland to help oil the celebrations for his daughter's christening. A good rule of thumb is not to drink anything poured out of an old Barr's glass pop bottle that isn't Irn Bru. Especially when it's hidden in a brown paper bag under the table.
The smell of paint and tobacco evokes memories of my dad coming back in the house from work. Fresh-cut grass stirs nostalgia for playing the game of football, the thrill of the pitch filling your nostrils.
Heather and bracken remind me of home. The whiff of wax on a Barbour jacket and I think of my uncles fishing. Of all the senses, it is smell that can shoot you back into the past most evocatively - and for me, it is the Windolene that takes me back the clearest.
My conscience is clear, and my guts most certainly are. Fancy a drop of the pink stuff, anyone?
