As a child I used to sniff glue, with my brother.
It never made me high because I was a naturally high soul anyway. I don’t know about my brother though, his face always brightened when we stopped at a petrol station. The smell of diesel rather excited him.
Somehow ironic that now he drives a car which needs petrol, not diesel.
When I wandered through my mother’s empty school during half term, the smell of freshly copied paper returns to my memory. I closed my eyes. Then I never missed the children. At half term a school building becomes all peaceful.
And you could almost think it has been built simply for this very smell to stay in my memory, not state education.
That was the only moment when I felt content, when I was 13; that day in July when I wore a jeans mini skirt with shimmering white lace. The sun was hot, quiet rooms, and only me and these handout copies my mother made for the upcoming term.
Two years after my mother left to become a headteacher in a neighbouring school, they shut my old memory, slowed the local traffic down to 30 km/h.