The worst smell I ever smelt

This post is inspired by a smell Thomas Jefferson (our dog not the dead president) made last night after eating sweet potatoes for the first time. It was possibly the second worst smell I have ever experienced.

The number one smell occurred in our flat in South Hampstead, London, back in 2006. The plughole in our bath started to back up and began to produce this black, lumpy sludge that I remember describing, in an e-mail I sent to Bec, as a "hell smell". I can only surmise it came from Hell, there or some equally inhospitable place (like West Texas, really what is the point?).

The smell left an indelible mark on my nasal passage, it smelt like a combination of garbage, rotting vegetables, death, men's locker room stench and New Orleans on a hot, summer day. Thankfully by the time I returned from work the pungent ooze had receded from whence it came , and after putting a bottle of pipe unblocker down the plughole it never returned again. It was a victory for all humankind, particularly me.