THE TCP MYSTERY

Here’s a mystery. The last few times I’ve got out of my car outside my flat, the whole street has smelled of TCP.

Bandages, those little scissors, a box of randomly-sized sticking plasters, a tube of Germolene, or maybe Savlon antiseptic cream... you get the picture... it’s like stepping into a first aid box.

Why? Where is that coming from? It fills the street! At first I thought it might have been me: I don’t know, somehow TCP got stuck up my nostrils or something... but you’d think I’d remember that. I mean, I once got a full snortful of Vix vaporub and I definitely recall it. TCP would burn holes in my sinuses, surely.

The only solution I’ve got is that Thames Water are doing something in the drains, maybe cleaning the pipes underground or something, and the waft is reaching the surface and leaking through the manhole covers. It’s either that, or one of my neighbours is turning a maisonette into a cul-de-sac mini hospital.

Or, wait... Isn’t there some awful syndrome when you start smelling strange fragrances just before your body shuts down and you collapse into a coma? There was something about smelling strawberries, I think, someone told me once. Then, that might have been a practical joke played on me by someone with a friend who was vaping round the corner, now that I think about it.

Anyway, it remains a mystery. And it could just be that the other day, someone accidentally spilled a bottle of TCP at the end of my road. And that must have been far more annoying than the subsequent mystery that that unfortunate event produced.