Writer's Block: Smells like teen spirit

[lazy_hoor]

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Late '70s - Purple photocopies. We had some arcane photocopying machine* in our school - it printed everything in purple and it smelled divine - a kind of powdery floral scent.  Five-year-old Hoor could often be found clasping a photocopy to her face and inhaling deeply.  Was mine the only school to have this?

The '80s smelled of Dior's Poison (mother, ugh), Body Shop White Musk (me) or Dewberry (scarletts_web).  I think The Body Shop was the predominant smell of the decade as it was cheap back then and it's where I purchased all my smellies - banana shampoo, fuzzy peach shower gel, cucumber cleanser, carrot moisturizer - I must have smelt like a salad. A musky salad.  scarletts_web  and I both loved Spiritual Sky patchouli oil as well. My mother always complained that patchouli oil gave her a headache and that even the cat stank of patchouli oil due to my over-enthusiastic application of the scent.  I still wear patchouli oil today, even though I most definitely am not a hippy, or a goth. I am also still fond of Body Shop smellies (the pink grapefruit range in particular) though I find Body Shop stuff quite expensive these days.

Early '90s - Colors of Benneton and Ex'cla-mation! by Coty. The latter was very cheap and nearly every girl I knew had a bottle.  I haven't seen Colors of Benneton in years, I wonder if I'd still like it?

* A mimeograph! Or possibly a spirit duplicator!

Bill Bryson is also a mimeograph fan: “Of all the tragic losses since the 1960s, mimeograph paper may be the greatest. With its rapturously fragrant, sweetly aromatic pale blue ink, mimeograph paper was literally intoxicating. Two deep drafts of a freshly run-off mimeograph worksheet and I would be the education system’s willing slave for up to seven hours.” Sniffing the paper he “…drifted off to a private place where fields were green, everyone went barefoot, and the soft trill of panpipes floated on the air.” -  The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Comments

[biascut.livejournal.com]

No! Everything was done on those purple machines at my school, too. They weren't photocopiers, though, they were some kind of mad mechanical thing: you'd see teachers patiently turning the handles and churning out prints, and each one got fainter, so you could only do a certain number of copies at a time. I think my primary school got a photocopier just about 1987-88 or something, but they still used the purple one because it was cheaper. But at secondary school, they only had photocopiers.

Ooh, here it is - it's a mimeograph!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Huh- apparently mimeographs are still used a lot in the developing world because it's a "more robust technology". Given that our office photocopier has to be serviced about once a week, this doesn't surprise me massively.

Ooh, we had a separate collator in the library at my secondary school too, because it was before photocopiers collated. It was HUUGE.

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Given that our office photocopier has to be serviced about once a week, this doesn't surprise me massively.
Same here. I wonder where one can purchase a mimeograph...

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Mimeograph! Well I never. I must now endeavor to find out why they smelled so good.

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

When I was in first school (early 80s), I remember that certain worksheets were printed into our exercise books by the teacher from a master copy that was purple. It wasn't a photocopy, though. She used to hold it onto the page, and then firmly scrape all down the thing with a large plastic trapezium from the Maths set. It's funny the things that stick in your mind...

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

*Points up*
Have discovered it was a mimeograph! Which makes me feel like an old person. "Eeeeh, back in my day we had mimeographs! And outdoor toilets!"

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

*Nods*

I think that we had the discount version! We didn't have outdoor toilets, though. Indoor ones, with rolls of greaseproof paper...

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, outdoor and greaseproof paper.

Indoor toilets! You're from the south, are you?

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

Indeed - Home Counties, darling! The parents in Commuter Belt Land wouldn't tolerate outdoor toilets for their offspring! (Mind you, in middle school, I remember that in the third and fourth years (those would be years Six and Seven in counties that aren't Cornwall and Surrey), the boys' toilet was sort of an annex to the main building.)

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

My first school was tiny. Two classrooms - one in an old Victorian building and one in a prefab. Toilets outside down some steps into what appeared to be a dungeon.

Happy days...

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

We didn't need a dungeon in First School - we had Mrs Craske. Think Zelda from "Terrorhawks" with honey-dyed hair, and you'd be about right.

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, oh god there's a woman on Irish telly who's the spit of Zelda... Can't remember her name though!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Our village junior school was an old Victorian school, until a new one was built in about 1987. The loos were original, and you had to go out across the playground to them. We're probably the last generation who shudder with recognition when reading Roald Dahl's Boy...

[k425.livejournal.com]

THE BANDA MACHINE! Goodness, yes, that's a proper 70s memory!

ETA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

I wonder what was in the ink that made it smell so nice?

[k425.livejournal.com]

Evaporating alcohol!

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm, alcohol....

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Oh, so it's not a mimeograph after all! That picture definitely looks like the one at our school.

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Yes, the print outs look very much like what we had.

Spirit duplicator is such a cool name, too!

[leedy.livejournal.com]

Early nineties smelt of New West for me. Mid-nineties, erm, sweat and Vicks?

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

Fine herbs from Afghanistan...

[scarletts-web.livejournal.com]

I was also fond of LouLou, and I remember you had a Chanel perfume (no 5?) and I always think of 80s Hoor when I smell that. Late 90s was Lush for me...

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

I still wear No. 5! When I can afford it...