Do I know you?
Well, the Xmas holidays are well and truly over and in many households they've left behind a funny smell. No I don't mean the smell of incense or vanilla. This year the Xmas hit was something called "stink blasters. Like hundreds of thousands of Czech adults I set about fulfilling this peculiar Xmas wish, without giving it anymore thought than I had given to the eyeball in goo the year before. Kids are kids - and what harm can a stink blaster do?
Well, the Xmas holidays are well and truly over and in many households they've left behind a funny smell. No I don't mean the smell of incense or vanilla. This year the Xmas hit was something called "stink blasters. Like hundreds of thousands of Czech adults I set about fulfilling this peculiar Xmas wish, without giving it anymore thought than I had given to the eyeball in goo the year before. Kids are kids - and what harm can a stink blaster do? In the toy store I battled my way through a throng of harassed parents and asked an assistant to direct me to the stink blasters department. She looked like this was all she was asked from morning till night, and without bothering to reply waved me in the direction of a human bee-hive. There was a huge pile of stink blasters - little plastic figures which all looked different -the inhabitants of a fairly large village called Smelleville. Each had a name that gave you a fairly accurate idea of the stink they would produce when you pressed them. The Silent Gasser, The Master Blaster, Dog Breath Danny, Sweat Sox Sammy, Garbage Truck Chuck and many more. It was clear at once that this was going to be a bigger challenge than usual. I knelt down and started sifting through all the available pongs sold at 190 crowns each. Soon I was completely engrossed in the task - some stinks were familiar - like a sewer stink, bad breath stink, rotten eggs stink, old fish stink, unwashed body stink and many others. But the producer of this particular hit had been exceptionally imaginative and some stinks were clearly worse than anything I'd ever smelled in my life. What stink should I go for that would protect me from the wrath of the rest of the family? In the end I couldn't resist - and emerged from the store with a delighted smile of anticipation clutching Rotten Egg Reggie. I hadn't smelt a rotten egg in a long time and was looking forward to the first whiff. Xmas was a huge success - bad egg smell and all. But -there was more to come. Taking the tram to work the other day I lifted my head from my book and sniffed. There was a distinct garlic smell wafting on the air. I couldn't tell where it was coming from but I knew who it was. It was old Gus the Garlic Man from Smellville.
