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Good Morning, I had Covid three months ago. Thankfully it was a mild dose. The only lingering symptoms, a loss of taste and smell. This is no great hardship. And at first it was faintly amusing. When I told my neighbour I’d lost my taste he said don’t worry, you’ve always dressed like that. Apples and onions still taste the same – i.e. of nothing. But at least I can’t smell the traffic or the drains. After a few weeks you get used to it. You forget. You try and get excited about the texture of things, the chewiness of bread, the silkiness of chocolate. Scientists say you need to re-train the brain by eating strong foods like chilli, mint and oranges. For a few weeks I have literally woken up and smelled the coffee. And it’s sort of working. Marmalade no longer tastes the same as Marmite. Beer tastes like a memory of beer – and my memories of beer are largely good ones. But taste and smell aren’t just about pleasure. They alert us to dangers. The other day my wife came home to find me sitting in a room that stank of glue from the building work happening below. I had no idea. I thought, I really need to regain my senses; to be able to detect the rank and the rancid. Like the people of Silverdale in Staffordshire, where the stench of the nearby landfill has given people headaches, asthma and anxiety, and levels of Hydrogen Sulphide have been found to be well in excess of guidelines. Perhaps it is more important not to lose a metaphorical sense of taste and smell. A malodorous cloud has hung over many recent news stories. A stench of injustice, whiff of scandal, the smell of a rat, things that leave a bad taste in the mouth. And it’s all come at once. It is as if our senses, dulled during Covid, left us unable to notice the smell emanating from the landfill. Perhaps, as people regain them, they are better able to taste what is sour and what is sweet, to sniff out the fragrant and the foul. Perhaps, as a nation, we are actually waking up and smelling the coffee. Odours – pleasing and poisonous – hover over the scene in many a Biblical story. Perfumes and pomegranates drip through its pages. But whilst taste and smell are sensual; they also have an ethical and spiritual dimension. The word offence has a Hebrew root-word meaning to smell bad. To offer your service, or an act of kindness is described as an aroma pleasing to God. The psalmist invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good. The key in all this is that we are able to discern, the good from the bad, the corrupt from the clean. And remind ourselves that life tasted and smelt good once, and that it can and will again.