What I didn’t expect was a cloud of insipid tastelessness to descend over my whole world — and I don’t mean the election campaign.
As bland and dreary as it is, the crawl to polling day is a feast of sensory delight compared to the past few days of life in lawnmower land.
Ten days ago the Chief Gardener and myself tested positive to COVID-19, which was about time considering the frenzied social life we both lead.
We reported the positive result and went straight into isolation, which meant sitting on the couch for a week instead of on the verandah.
After two doorstep grocery deliveries from our son we began to realise that life was indeed carrying on elsewhere, but we were just not invited.
The cracks in the corners of the walls became potential escape routes and corridors to endless rooftop SAM gatherings where people sip cocktails and dance the cha-cha as the sun goes down. The usually annoying nocturnal scrabblings in the walls were suddenly quite friendly.
We soldiered on in the belief that one day soon we would be welcomed back into the embrace of the world.
Then three nights ago a funny thing happened.
We were preparing our favourite Italian recipe handed down by a hundred generations of nonnas from the Abruzzi mountains, which involves frying a few cloves of garlic gently to infuse the olive oil for a tomato sauce.
As a special treat we always eat the oil-soaked cloves once the infusion process is complete. We take them out of the oil just as they turn biscuity-brown. I popped one in my mouth expecting the usual explosion of creamy garlic, but nothing happened. I tried another one. Nothing — just a chewy lump of fat.
I thought wow — this Chinese garlic is taking on the attributes of the country’s National Congress of the Communist Party — bland, boring and all show with no substance.
The tomato sauce was the same — insipid and tasteless. The tomatoes came from our garden and a few days ago they were sweet and tart. Amazing what a spell in the fridge will do to fresh food, or what overcooking will do. But don’t tell the Chief Gardener for cripes’ sake.
Things were changing. Smoked almonds tasted like boxwood, cheese like sliced thongs and a glass of Die Spätburgunder 1973 became watery cherry cola.
Then I realised there was no smell to fried garlic or the guava nectar and jasmine gaia candle on the lounge-room dresser.
COVID can change your sense of smell and taste. For some people it can take weeks to return, others are still waiting months later for the return of their senses.
I was a smoker for 30 years so my sense of smell and taste has never been acute, but I don’t want to live in a world where cheese has the consistency of crumbly rubber.
Apparently, to regain a sense of smell it helps to take regular whiffs of essential oils such as oregano, lemon and eucalyptus just to crank your nose back into gear. I think I’ll start with Spätburgunder 1973.
I have never paid much attention to smell and taste. It’s always been there, like breathing, and I’m not a gourmand. Baked beans are my foundation ingredient.
But right now, the sensual world is as thin and transparent as one of those falling autumn leaves.
The world becomes even paler when you realise taste and smell are the conduits of memory. I’m hoping this isn’t forever and I don’t forget the joy of eating cold baked beans out of a tin on a winter morning on a school camping trip in Wales as dew-thaw drips from tree branches.
If that memory fades, then baked beans are just baked beans.
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