Yesterday the aerosol highs of spray paint cans from graffiti artists along the canal. The comforting smell of burning wood stoves billowing from boats in a Hackney Wick. Today the similar, but distinct whiffs of chimney smoke from a posh crescent house.

Cyclist smells: waiting behind a Domino’s pizza trailer at a red light on Hackney road, whiffs of warm dough and melted cheese making a beeline for the nose. Nameless puffs of familiar perfume from what could only be dry pitted Dutch bike commuters, unhurried.

Sun’s out, and that classic favourite freshly cut grass smell rising in flecks and clippings from St James’ Park announces that spring has arrived.

The long weekend was the unmistakeable freshness of blossom and new, green life on the Surrey Canal Walk. The stench of something dead or excreted as the market on Whitechapel Road packs up for the day. The comforting draw of wood smoke from house boats.

Sniffing roses in Lyon’s Tete d’Or park, no matter how far you bury your nose into the silky petals you can never quite get enough of the delicate, alluring scents. Even in April there are many, each seducing your nostrils in a different way.

In the dappled April warmth, a woman sits on a terrasse drinking a crisp glass of white wine. Behind her, a poissonerie; the fetor of dead fish combines with the Côtes de Rhône to produce an unconventional, but nevertheless quintessential olfactory experience.

Assaulted by the neighbours’ dank cigarette smoke like a tornado through my window. The gentle perfume of thousands of fallen petals scattered across the streets of Clapton. The spring scentscape is enough to heal anyone’s nostrils.

The universally loved cut grass smell moving in through my open garden doors, enveloping my senses in freshness. Neighbour smoking cigarettes again - presumably depending on the tobacco brand the smell would be different, but it’s not a scent discovery I wish to pursue!

That fresh hit of the clean evening breeze when you haven’t left the house all day. The distinctive city stench of those who have no access to sanitation. The sweet aroma of orange blossoms in Stoke Newington, turning the streets of London into a bakery in Cairo.

Raining in Marble Arch. I said ivy. He said fresh jalapeños crossed with tarmac.

The mildly pleasant smell of fresh cow dung, accentuated by the light but insistent drops of rain in the Devon countryside

Proper smorgasbord of London smells today. Dead animal flesh that we’re strangely accustomed to but disgusts us anyway at Smithfields, the sizzling slightly burnt onions on a tiny hot dog stand outside Farringdon station. A teenage boy’s sweat on a crowded Jubilee line train.

Today’s rich, cut grass smell filled my nostrils as I cycled through London Fields. It was one of those summer early afternoons when the sun is high and the foliage and its accompanying scent was technicolour.

A panoply of scent on Broadway market. Faecal matter, passers-by scrunching their noses as you scrunch your own. The inviting and familiar smell of garlic getting golden in a layer of olive oil, and a washing powder that you’ve always longed to have but never known the brand of

At home, the abrasive stench of cheap cigarettes wafts through my open doors at regular intervals. The smell of detergent arrives on the eastern wind (from a clean passer-by? A laundrette?) And the rain, the rain. They call it petrichor, one of mother earth’s many perfumes.

Buenos Aires. A city full of tropical greenery. Floral smells I can’t identify, at dusk and at dawn. Dog faeces everywhere, dried up by the sun but the smell lingers at bus stops and under trees.

Buenos Aires. Flowers I’ve never smelled before, the scent coming alive at dusk. Following a caramelised trail of those Danish butter biscuits that come in a tin, before realising it’s the plumes from a vape. Dog poo, everywhere, a lot of the time.

Buenos Aires. A city of olfactory extremes. Cut grass, the putrid decaying of rubbish, coexisting, temporary.

Blossoms of flowers I can’t name is heavy and heady in Copenhagen. Lightly salty and fishy on the canals near Christiania.

Edinburgh was the compelling smell of warm pizza dough against cardboard, the inevitable fart here and there with the city’s population having doubled in size in August, and weed smoke in the stairwells leading down to the train station wafting us on our way home.