Smelling gorse

I'm obsessed with taste and smell, to the point that I sniff things quite a bit. I took RTL for a walk on Hounslow Heath this weekend to find that gorse was in flower (it almost always seems to be in flower, at least a bit), so I sniffed one of the flowers. They have the most amazing smell of coconut. [Picture above was taken with my mobile phone camera.]

The world of aromas is one that, to a degree, is closed to us. We traded a whole stack of our olfactory ability for trichromatic vision some time back in evolutionary history. We don't have functional vomeronasal organs (which detect pheromones); many of our olfactory receptor genes are pseudogenes. As a result, I reckon we have to make a special effort to work on our ability to detect and recognize smells. Even then, it's clear that RTL experiences a spatial smell landscape that I just don't get.

In some ways, it has been a strange weekend here in West London. Saturday was lovely and spring-like, and Sunday also started that way. But then just after lunch the wind started, and then the rain. It was horrible. Just as we thought spring was really on the way, we've had another reminder of winter.

Busy week ahead. Off to Denbies tomorrow for final planning of http://www.sparklingwinesymposium.com/. Then on Tuesday there's the Tesco Press tasting, the Portuguese tasting and the Caballeros dinner. I have a 06.30 flight to Portugal on Wednesday, where I stay until Friday. Two articles to write, as well.