‘The smells cling to you like a misjudged cologne’

Kent in the summertime is a wonderful spectacle; blue skies gleaming above beautiful countryside and a stunning coastline. The Garden of England does not, however, always smell of roses. This week, for example, near where I live, local farmers started doing a spot of muck-spreading .

As their tanks trundled over their fields liberally distributing the excrement of heaven knows what (or perhaps that should read ‘who’), the smell swept the neighbourhood - infiltrating any open window or door it could find. Not, I can assure you, very pleasant. Although I suppose it does disguise the seemingly omnipresent waft of cannabis smoke these days .

I understand the purpose behind it, of course, yet I do rue the fact the need to do so coincides with warm pleasant evenings. I once worked in a newspaper office, a converted barn no less, which was sat in the middle of the countryside, just outside Ashford . A beautiful place to work but also surrounded by farmers’ fields.

Let’s just say there were times of the year when the stench was so bad it seemed to cling to your skin like a dreadfully misjudged cologne. Meanwhile, if you live along certain areas of Kent’s wonderful coastline there is one regular summer visitor which can frequently bring tears to your eyes – and not in a good way. Seaweed is nothing unusual, of course, but, by crikey, when it washes up on our shores and is then baked by the sun, the pungent aroma of the gases it releases can be overpowering .

Think acres of.