Smells of the Town

Perfume from one pharmacy, faint and floral. A sort of sterilised smell from the next, almost a non-smell, but stifling.

From the Austral Cafe I expect warm, savoury odours of the all-day breakfast, but there is only a whiff of tobacco from the cigarette butts in the ashtray outside.

The day is hot but there is just a trace in the air of the smell of coming rain.

In Coles a large, handsome man wearing only board shorts and a piece of cloth tying his ponytail drinks deeply from a big plastic bottle of milk before putting it into his trolley. I want to be close to enjoy looking at him, but his smell drives me away. He doesn’t look dirty but he smells unwashed — not reeking but stale. I decide he must be homeless.