My Dog's Got No Nose

I lost my sense of smell when I was fifteen.

I'd been rushed to hospital with a burst appendix and a fully functioning pheromonal facility. A couple of weeks of hilarious japes with abdominal drainage tubes later and I left hospital with neither appendix nor sense of smell.
My doctor shrugged his shoulders. Had I been a private patient, he could have made a lot of money from me, but this was the NHS, so his reaction was best summed up by the word "whatever".

Recently, this condition seems to have become fashionable and even has a name (anosmia) and lists of famous anosmics such as William Wordsworth and Michael Hutchens (and somewhat more yummily, Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream) have appeared in the papers.

While this condition is classed a disability, we anosmics don't qualify for disability allowance like those scrounging slackers in the blind and deaf communities (smug bastards with their "proper" disabilities, curse their cotton socks).

Apparently, permanent anosmics like old Dive often have a much more developed sense of taste than those sniffy people with real working noses. It's kinda nice for an arty-farty snob like me to have my superior taste officially recognised.

Weirdly, I can still remember smells and that can be a real pain.
I sometimes wake up from a dream (I can still smell in dreams, how freaky is that?) with a smell stuck in my brain that stays there all day. The most annoying "virtual smell" I get stuck with is the smell of washday from when I was a little kid. We had a cold tap and a copper by the range for heating water. The awful smell of damp, soap-powdery clothes in a tiny back room sometimes assails me for days at a time. And oranges … which is a real pisser if I'm hungry.

Some advantages I have over "normally nosed" people:
- I can sit quite happily beside a farting dog and not notice a thing, while the rest of the room runs away, gagging.
- I am a demon at raw chili-eating contests.
- er … that's about it.

Some disadvantages:
- Being unable to smell burning.
- Being unable to smell gas.
- Being shaken awake in the dead of night with a "What's that smell?"
- Having to follow a frantic woman round the house as she tries to locate the "burning smell" or "leaking gas" she is convinced has woken her. And being bawled out for my inability to help.
- Not realising I have a drainage problem until someone visits and reels back, going "What the fuck is that stink?"
- Not realising I've got dogshit on my shoe at work.
- Becoming a fanatically clean person so I don't risk being smelly.

And a couple more:
Having no sense of smell and an enhanced sense of taste, I tend to "taste" smells, but can only pick up on a tiny amount of any smell. And it's usually the wrong part of it …
Ame (and a lot of other people besides) loves Lush products. While I can understand that they might smell very nice to her, all I can pick up on is a horrid taste of washday soap powder and rotting fruit.
And I know a lot of you like perfume …
Well should we ever meet, please, PLEASE don't wear any. It's an effective Dive repellent (maybe I shouldn't have given that away).
Even with the most expensive perfumes, all I can taste is the solvent. Chanel No5 tastes like a petrol/paint-stripper flavour and is the last thing I want to inhale close up.
I'm with the Japanese in finding the neck the most erotic part of a woman. For me, there is nothing nicer than nuzzling into that bit under her ear and inhaling lovely fresh, clean woman. If she's wearing perfume I have to reel away and have (once or twice) been known to involuntarily gag. EWW! That stuff is repellent!

So. That's me and my anosmia.
At least I have better taste than you. Official.