Wednesday, 25 November 2020

Petrichor


When I got dressed today I was drawn to the colour orange.
It is a colour that always cheers me up on grey days like this one.
It also made me think about an outfit I wore over 7 years ago when I visited Cambridge University and stayed at Magdalene College for two nights during a teaching conference.
It was a magical experience of a parallel universe.

Here I am in my orange jeans with King's College in the background.

It was during that stay which I blogged about here that I discovered one of my favourite words, Petrichor.

It is the word that describes the scent the earth gives off when it rains after a lengthy dry period.

It is so specific and so evocative. 

It is one of the reasons I love to run in the summer rain.

I discovered the word in The Bellwether Revivals, by Benjamin Wood, a novel I bought from a Cambridge bookshop during my stay.



The novel begins with a character seduced by the sound of singing from King's College and follows the fortunes of a group of young people in the university town.

When I returned home I discovered that the author was once a student at the sixth form college where I was working as a tutor.

Out of interest I googled petrichor and discovered that you can buy candles and oils with the scent of petrichor!

The word also inspired this great piece of music from Ludovico Einaudi.

I don't think I will be smelling the scent of petrichor for a while as the temperature here has dropped but at least I can put a candle on my Christmas list.





I wore:

Boots - M & S

Leggings - Dorothy Perkins

Top - French Connection

Cardigan - Karen Millen (from eBay)




 

6 comments:

  1. Orange is one of those colours that always makes me feel good - it's lovely on you.

    Another excellent word - it often smells like petrichor here as all the leaves start to decompose.

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  2. Orange looks really good on you, I love wearing it, too! xxx

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  3. Another great word Jane, and one of my favourite smells! I will now look out for pertichor scented items. Cambridge is very beautiful and very Hogwarts. I played a gig there years ago one snowy January – there were only a handful of people in the audience due to the thick snow and we almost got stuck ourselves, but my band mates and I loved having a look around the University Town. Lulu x

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    Replies
    1. Isn't it a lovely city Lulu? I much preferred it to Oxford.
      I bet that was beautiful - snow in Cambridge X

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