A Nose... Wouldn't I like to be one?

Well, we are not talking about childhood dreams today...  but we are talking a little about it.

When I was younger, I wanted to be "A Nose".  To be A Nose, one would need to be able to distinguish quite a lot of smells (~500, if I recall correctly).  Wikipedia has this lovely definition -- "The perfumer is effectively an artist who is trained in depth on the concepts of fragrance aesthetics and who is capable of conveying abstract concepts and moods with fragrance compositions."  By the way, go click on the Wikipedia link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer) to look at a perfumer's workstation.  Cool, right?  Sure beats a desk full of papers and books etc. 

Anyway, today, I came across one of my all time favourite shops (Perfect Potions) in a somewhat local shopping mall.  How this shop qualifies as all time favourite beats me because I had only been to the original shop once in my life while today would be my second visit to a Perfect Potions shop.  Now, this shop used to be cool shop for me years ago -- I felt like a child in a candy stall, being able to mix and match, chop and change, jiggle this and wiggle that...  However, today, I was a little disappointed.  Not only can I not do the above, apparently, there is no perfumer who will come up with a scent for me (just for me).  In my defence, I had been physically incapacitated yesterday (vomited twice and had a massive 36hr headache marathon with myself); thus, was out trying to get some herbal remedies.

Well, I can get some basic aromatherapy oils and mix them myself.  I did consider the latter option BUT I decided against it for a good reason.  I have come to realise that my previous keen sense of smell has become less sharp (okay, I accept that it is duller -- but less sharp sounds less demoralising).

I used to be able to distinguish smells just like that... but today, I was struggling to work out this from that...  Lavender, I can do it with my eyes closed.  Orange, come on.  Cloves, that's a walk over.  These are smells from my childhood.  These are smells that must be locked into my brain's filing cabinet.  However, I struggle with the others -- names that I had heard of but never really smelled before.  Guess what I found???  Yes, I am right...  as we get older our sense of smell goes downhill (read http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579627/).  I am sure there are articles similar to this. 

There goes another childhood dream!