A Foodie's Living Nightmare

I am a foodie. That's pretty obvious, given the time I dedicate to other two blogs Tashcakes! and Where I Like to Eat. I love looking at food, smelling food and tasting food. Well, almost all food. Show me a raw tomato or an aubergine in any shape or form and I'll run in the opposite direction, I have a very mild phobia of mushrooms and avocado makes me so sick I hallucinate; but in general, food is fun.

For the last couple of weeks I've been ill. So ill, in fact, I didn't notice what was gradually happening to me until a couple of days ago, when I began to feel more like a human being again. There were a few clues, although I didn't realise at the time.

The first clue was a most obscure one: my mood was flat. Not bad, just flat: walking to different places or putting something delicious in the oven or hanging out the washing triggered no emotional response from me. I put it down to just being run down from being ill.

The second clue was when I snapped off a square of dark chocolate to celebrate being able to breathe through my nose again, but somehow still feeling flat. Again, it did nothing.

The second clue was at work again when I decided to treat myself to a carrot muffin for breakfast at work. My colleague noticed me poking at it forlornly with a fork and smiled.

"Well? How is it?"

"It's got the perfect texture: light, moist and with just enough bite. But it tastes of nothing."

My colleague looked surprised, saying that our other colleague had eaten one too and had thought it was perfect, but then again I did make cakes every week so I'd be the most qualified to comment. We all shrugged it off- I can usually pick out obscure notes and flavours in things no-one else can when it comes to food, so we all assumed I was just being a tad critical. I finished my carrot muffin dejectedly, bemoaning the waste of calories that I could have spent on something tastier.

The final clue- the clue that made the awful penny drop- was yesterday evening when I was cooking beef rendang (a highly aromatic Malay curry) and baking vanilla cupcakes at the same time. My mum came home, and commented on what a wonderful smell it was.

"Which one?" I asked, beaming, and then I froze.

It hit me at once: I couldn't tell which smell was which.

In fact, I couldn't smell anything at all.

I panicked, and went to my cooking chocolate stash to snap off another square of dark chocolate. I popped it in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. My worst fears were confirmed: I had also completely lost my sense of taste. Even worse: the loss of my senses of smell and taste had also bizarrely robbed me of the memory of smell and taste. Everything was just... nothing. Nothing at all.

Have you ever been in a silent room, minding your own business, when suddenly everything just goes *silent* silent? You realise that the room was never silent to begin with, you just didn't notice the noise of the boiler, or the fan, or whatever droning noise there was in the background until it stopped? Well, losing your sense of smell is exactly like this.

What was I going to do? I knew of people who had, like me, gotten a severe cold, lost their sense of smell and taste, and then had literally never gotten those senses back again, even years after. I'm a baker, for pity's sake! How the hell am I going to experiment with new flavours when I can't taste what the frig those flavours are?

After dinner yesterday evening, my family trouped down to vote for the elections. Like always, the voting was held at my old primary school down the road. How I missed being able to smell the rubber smell of plimsolls and the sweetly acrid smell of wood polish in the gym, and all the old smells of when I was five years old. I've always been aware of the power of smell and how evocative it can be: certain smells can give me very strong flashbacks. However with my sense of smell gone, I was even more acutely aware of what I had lost.

The worst thing about it though is how disconnected to the world you become. No familiar smell of home when you walk through the door after a long day of work. No smell of damp leaves when it stops raining and the sun comes out. No smell of freshly cut grass, of people, of fresh baking or cooking, or more seriously gas leaks or burning.

My experience has so far been met with mixed reactions, mainly of those who can't imagine what it's like and understand how terrible it actually is- and those who can't imagine what it's like and think it's really no big deal.

IT'S A BIG DEAL.

Of the things I've eaten so far, the only way I know what I'm eating is through texture. I have the vague sense of if something is sweet or non-sweet (not even savoury), but it's more like an echo of sweetness rather than actually tasting sweetness. The lovely fragrant curry I made may as well have been textured cardboard. The chocolate I ate may as well have been pleasantly melting plastic.

However, there is hope: despite realising I've been like this for the past week without noticing and fearing I might be like this for a while, if not indefinitely, I noticed a faint scent of flowers a couple of hours ago when I put some hand cream on. It was there and gone again in a few seconds, but at least it gives me hope that my sense of smell and taste have only temporarily gone on holiday!