HOW CAN A PERSON LOVE THE SMELL OF A NON-SMELL?

My name is Amanda and I have a confession to make.

I am addicted to Febreeze.

England is a country of smokers, at least compared to the West Coast of Canada. Ray and I are not smokers, and we don't like the smell of cigarette smoke - either in the air or, worst of all, in our clothes and hair. Oh, the perils of long hair in a smokey pub! As it is not uncommon to find us spending time in one smokey pub or another, we have to deal with the stinky problem on a fairly regular basis.

Washable items are fine. My jeans, fine. My jumpers, fine. My body and hair, fine and fine. "Not fine" items include high-maintenance dry-clean-only clothing and delicates like my cashmere/silk scarf. Ray's leather jacket is also definitely on the "not fine" list but so far he's avoided stinkification by remembering not to wear it out to pubs.

It's the "not fine" articles that get the Febreeze/cherry tree treatment in our household. For those unfamiliar with this particular method of clothes de-stinkification, it involves spraying the odiferous article with copious amounts of Febreeze (don't forget the inside surfaces!) and then hanging it from the cherry tree in one's garden to dry and be flapped by the breeze. On rainy days the top of a doorway can be used to hang clothes but it's not nearly so effective as the cherry tree - plus it removes all the nervous anticipation of approaching one's clothes to check whether the pigeons have pooped on them.

After an hour or two the clothes have lost their ciggy odour and retain only the faint aroma of Febreeze. (It should be noted that the company that makes this product insists it does not have an odour itself, but somehow miraculously removes ALL odours. My nose begs to differ, although Ray has suggested on more than one occasion that perhaps my nose is just a little too sensitive (usually during a disagreement over whether the garbage needs to be taken out RIGHT NOW or whether it can wait one more day).

After a Febreeze day, I've caught myself taking surreptitious, approving sniffs of my scarf...mmmmm Febreezy-smell. I would sniff other places but it wouldn't be nearly so discrete. At first I thought it was my expensive perfume that I was appreciating, but it seems that it's the smell of two-quid fabric de-stinkifier that I love the most.

This either means that I a) have a most unrefined sniffer or b) am so much of a clean freak that I'm turned on JUST BY THE SMELL OF CLEAN. Neither option is looking so flattering.

(Disclaimer: I am not paid by the makers of Febreeze for this endorsement...however, if they would like to send a sizable cheque my way I just might be able to figure out a way to spend it!)