Words and their special meanings.

 Potent.

This one is interesting. I have some memories about this word but I also know already of what it will evoke to me someday.

For the current memories: It must be spring, I am gardening as always. Potent to me is a red plastic watering can and my previous upstairs neighbours with his hat on. I borrowed the former from the latter one day and he warned me not to be surprised by the smell (the latter did). It had been hosting nettle leaf plant food, and he told me it was potent. Because of that first encounter, for a long time I thought potent should be used about something smelling heavily and unpleasantly.

Even though I know the whole meaning of potent now, its special meaning is only partly what I used to know about it: a smell so strong it makes you jump back and try expel it from your body, and probably frown and wrinkle and wince. Interesting fact for those who don’t know about nettle plant food: the literal French translation would be ‘nettle manure’. That should give you a good picture of how strong it gets.

The other part of potent is all gardening bliss: robins getting closer and closer over the summer to come and steal the worms I’ve digged out, and even grabbing them from my palm a few times. The soothing smell of damp soil and leaves I love so much, the joy and excitement at every new bud. That time when I dug out a stump and managed to make a mess more massive than my strip of garden will ever be. The fruitless fight against ivy who’s going to claim its territory back as soon as I move out but I don’t care and keep on ripping it off until my fingers are sore. The satisfaction of seeing that lily of the valley field in front of my house where I’ve cleared out some space for it to grow better. (Essentially by ripping off ivy. See ivy, SEE?)

Now for the future. Potent is all about spring and gardening in our current flat, here and now. It can’t really be about Cambridge yet because everything’s covered in Cambridge when you still live there. But some day I know, potent will make me wistful. I will remember a period of my life, and all the good friends I’ve left behind whom I’ll probably never meet again. The weekend playing games or drinking out or visiting the nearby countryside. Grandchester blackberries, ballet classes at Bodyworks, Sunday morning’s breakfast from Sainsbury’s in town on that bench over that Cam’s bend with St John’s in the background. And Wednesday dinners. All the little things you can take for granted, all the everyday places. All the minor things which have become meaningful just because they’ve been part of your life one day. That constant smell of washing powder in that alley leading to that footbridge, that shop where the pasta on display always looks dry. The parks, cows and pubs, the colleges and the river. The local shops and all the people you know but don’t, but who are part of your happy day to day life.