They say those who smell least, smell best.

But that’s all about to change – for armchair travellers who may soon get their first sniff of a sea cruise on their TV.

Earlier this week, researchers at the University of California, San Diego,who conducted a two-year experiment in collaboration with Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology in Korea, announced that smell can now be part of a television viewer’s experience.

With the imminent arrival of smell-o-vision it’s now possible to generate odour in a tiny device that can fit on the back of a TV, or even a mobile phone.

There are potentially thousands of smells to choose from.

Sniff! Sniff!

The nostrils boggle.

So what kind of smells would you care to experience while watching a sample cruise on your home or pocket TV?

Disney is said to add the aroma of sweet cotton candy to certain areas of their land-based theme parks, but I’m not sure if they do the same thing for their cruise ships. Not that I’d mind.

Most cruise ships don’t smell of anything much apart from food – when it’s cooked on a deck barbecue, or fresh bread, disinfectant, B.O. (especially in the lifts, from those passengers who think sailing on the sea is equal to taking an actual dip in any kind of water), the sea, whatever smells of distant lands are carried on the sea’s breeze, and – less often, thank God – sea-sick passengers bringing up their lunch while bouncing around in the Bay of Biscay during a gale.

Now, although I am a lover of cheese, I can never tell whether some cheeses are imported or deported from Italy. A whiff of ripe Gorgonzola from my TV would put me off virtually anything, never mind a cruise.

Where that smell coming from?

Which reminds me of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, whose narrator described the following cheesy adventure in Chapter Four:

‘I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned the corner.

‘There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour.

‘The wind still blew in his direction, and before we reached the end of the street he was laying himself out at the rate of nearly four miles an hour, leaving the cripples and stout old ladies simply nowhere.
It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at the station; and I do not think they would have done it, even then, had not one of the men had the presence of mind to put a handkerchief over his nose, and to light a bit of brown paper….’

Later, when the cheeses were transferred to the luggage rack of a railway carriage, the smell shook up the other passengers.

‘A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to fidget.

“Very close in here,” he said.

“Quite oppressive,” said the man next him.

‘And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went.

‘The remaining four passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves…’

Phew! Open a window!!

By the way, if you ever find yourself swooning courtesy of smell-a-cruise-vision TV, smelling salts won’t revive you as quickly as sniffing a fine brandy.

But what we really really want, I reckon, is taste-a-cruise vision. Trouble is if that came along you might as well stay home.

James Leavey

Posted in Humour