It is a fact that I was raised on a "diet" of coke. Not the sort that comes in a distinguishing shaped bottle. But the by-product of coal into gas. When the hostilities of World War II ended this six year old returned to the east end of London, having been evacuated to Peterborough, Lincolnshire, UK when Hitler's luftwaffe blew the roof off his parents Bungalow! The first "smell" he remembered was Barking Station just down the road. That utility provided gas to cook by and coke to heat by for the next decade. Another earlier exposure to "our" (coke) industry took place in the nearby Ford motor works factory in Dagenhan, Essex. The "smell" of its blast furnaces thickled by olfactory nerves with an aroma that I liked, and still do. In the next half a century I have had the pleasure of ingesting that smell all over the world. The blast furnaces of my childhood in Essex, UK where supplanted by working in British Steel's Scunthorpe plants with side visits to Llanwern (Scotland) and port Talbort (Wales).
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