You could smell the pool before you could see it. Somewhere between the car park and the turnstile it reached you, that great warm wall of chlorine and sunscreen and hot concrete, and your whole body knew what it meant. School was out. The day was yours. Nothing was expected of you except to be back at the car by five with your towel and one thong, because the other one was always, somehow, gone.
The Australian public pool in summer was its own small country, and every one of them smelled exactly the same.
It started at the kiosk window, where the whole afternoon was decided for a fistful of coins. Hot chips in a paper cup, so hot they burned your fingers and so good you did not care. A Sunnyboy frozen into a solid pyramid you had to bite and suck and eventually surrender to. A Paddle Pop that melted faster than you could eat it, running chocolate and caramel down your wrist and into the crook of your elbow while the flies took a keen interest. The kiosk lady knew everyone and hurried no one, and the queue smelled of coconut sunscreen and wet cement and, faintly, of the deep fryer working overtime.
Then the water. That first jump was a decision you made with your whole heart, because the top few inches were bath-warm from a day of sun and the rest was a shock that emptied your lungs. You came up gasping and grinning and immediately did it again. You practised handstands until your sinuses filled with chlorine. You held competitions no adult had sanctioned and no one officially won. You stayed under too long just to hear the strange muffled boom of the world with your ears below the surface.
The concrete around the edge was another world entirely, a shimmering griddle that you crossed at a dead sprint, hopping from towel to towel like the ground was lava, which as far as the soles of your feet were concerned, it was. Towels staked out territory in a bright patchwork. Someone's nan sat fully clothed under the one patch of shade, guarding the bags and the good spot with the quiet authority of a woman who had seen every summer before this one and would see plenty more.
You came out warm and pink and completely spent.
By late afternoon the light went long and gold and the pool began to empty out. Your fingertips were pruned to raisins. Your eyes were pink from the chlorine and your nose was peeling already, a badge you would wear for a week. You were tired in the particular, bone-deep, sun-drunk way that only a whole day of swimming can do to a kid, the kind of tired that feels like an achievement.
And then the walk to the car, towel around your shoulders like a cape, the smell of you now a whole story on its own: chlorine and coconut and hot chips and sunscreen and a little bit of that frozen chocolate you never quite washed off. You fell asleep in the back seat before you hit the highway, and you dreamed, probably, of doing it all again tomorrow.
- You crossed the hot concrete at a full sprint, every single time
- You owned exactly one and a half thongs by the end of summer
- A Paddle Pop melted down your arm before you were halfway through it
- You could hold your breath for an amount of time that terrified your mother
- You still know that smell the second you read the word chlorine
The Smell That Stays
Here is the strange and lovely thing about all of it. You have not been to that pool in years, maybe decades. You could not tell someone the opening hours or the price of a hot chip or the name of the kiosk lady. But the smell is still in there, filed away somewhere it cannot be deleted, waiting. Catch a whiff of coconut sunscreen on a stranger at the shops and you are eight years old again, standing on hot cement, deciding whether to jump.
Scent does that better than any photograph. It skips the thinking part of your brain entirely and goes straight for the feeling, and summer, for a lot of us, is the most feeling-heavy season there is. Which is why a fresh, coconut-and-citrus scent in the middle of a grey week can do something a little magic. It cannot hand you back the whole day at the pool. But it can hand you the feeling of it, for a moment, in your own lounge room.
Coconut and Lime is that scent for a lot of people, all creamy coconut and bright, zesty citrus, the smell of sunscreen and holidays and being somewhere warm. Mermaid Beaches does it too, fresh and fruity and coastal, the closest thing to a beach day you can bottle. Run one on a cold afternoon and see where your mind wanders.
What did your summers smell like?
Chlorine and coconut and hot chips, probably.Some of it, you can still get back.
