Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Bubble Gum Tree


It has a special name to the local murri people and it has a fancy latin one given to it by a long dead foreign botanist. It also has a simple name at the nursery if you want to plant your own. But I call it the Bubble Gum Tree. It's no gum tree though.

It stands about 5 meters (16 feet) and gets these masses of gorgeous blooms that smell redolent of bubble gum. Isn't it strange how a random, unexpected smell can suddenly transport you back in time to a treasured moment?

It might be a stranger's perfume or aftershave as you pass in the street, that print smell when you open a brand new novel or just the whiff of resin curing at the surfshop shaping bay. Then, snap! The brain flickers back into its data bank quicker than a hard drive searching for a lost jpeg. And bingo, an image appears briefly in your mind's eye - maybe shaping a board at home at 15 or in my case making a translucent skateboard with two layers of acrylic (perspex) sandwiched between several layers of fibreglass.

And yes, it did support my mass through some epic street runs.

No comments:

Post a Comment