When we say "blue", do we mean exactly the same thing? It's a matter of philosophical debate going to the root of human experience.

I just realised I'm the man who sees lime where others see aqua. I reallyo, trulyo cannot smell. I've known this for ages, but only just realised what a huge and weird thing it is, and how difference a life experience I'm going through as a result.

I cannot be relied upon to smell anything. I assumed it was a sort of laziness, as if I wasn't putting in enough effort - but you don't put in effort with senses. They're just there, and you don't need effort to touch or hear.

It has only recently occured to me that this is very different to the way others do it.

Some things, I can smell, but often, only when something is pointed out to me - which makes me wonder if I am creating the experience because I know I ought to smell something. I remember:

• banana; smells rather like dried banana tastes, a clammy sweetness. I should add that in general, I can't catch the scent of banana - this was a onetime occasion, and I basically pushed it up my nostrils for five minutes before I got anything. And when I succeeded, I found it totally revolting.
  
• vomit, sometimes, a similarly sweet sensation
  
• rotting celery - but everyone else there insisted it didn't smell of anything
• the sea, and sort-of fish
  
• perfume; but it never smells pleasant or even different. It's like a constant, metallic chemical tang. Friend 4 and Calypso both insist that's all it ever smells like.
• Actually, I'm quite good with chemical: deodourant
• I think I have smelt smoke, although this could be wishful thinking.
  
• In addition, I experience very vivid phantom smells when reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. I do not know what this means, if anything.
  

Are these all a certain type of smell? But crucially, I only ever get them when paying serious attention. What can't I smell? Everything else. There are probably smells I don't even know I'm missing! Does milk smell? What about biscuits? I know rocks don't smell, because the movie Perfume says so, but what about wood? I suppose the biggest and most obvious casualty is nature. A list of things I have definitely never smelt:

• flowers (and flower-scented things). Do sunflowers smell?
• grass
• trees
• Dinner cooking in the distance
• people - now is your cue to say "well, that explains a lot..."
  
• exhaust fumes
• pets (apparently the rats smell...?)
  
• crap (does crap smell? It seems like it ought, being generally disgusting and objectionable, but I've never got that impression)
  

As an aesthete, I am depressed that I miss part of the sensory experience of the world. But only in the way I abstractly "miss" the fact I'm not telepathic: it's not like I've lost something I had. Which does happen to some, and that must really suck. Friend 5 has the most incredible olifactory memory. Often she'll catch whiff of something, and link it to a very specific memory: "ooooh, it smells just like that book I was reading two years ago"; or "that smells of my fire at Christmas".

It often seems to me like a bloody superpower. I'm always impressed when someone can tell a smoker is around, even before seeing them - Calypso does this all the time. Smoke irritates my nostrils, but doesn't really smell of anything but heavy. I certainly only "smell" it when I know someone is smoking nearby. Mind you, Calypso often regards my state as similarly marvellous - especially when someone has to volunteer for a really reeky job!

I do feel a revulsed sensation when handling rotting food, but I'm increasingly sure this is just imitation of what I should have; and if I don't think about it, I do not notice. A sense is instinctive. I suppose the nearest analogy would be tuning out loud music.

Wikipedia calls the condition "anosmia", but also mentions "hyposmia" which is a partial loss of smell. I'm not sure which I have, and I don't think there's an easy way to work it out because from evidence, I know you can (or at least, I can) create phantom pain in a limb merely by imagining it diseased. So how would I ever "know" I smelt, not just imagining I smelt? And how could I tell whether my experience of what I call "smell" is the same as most people's? It certainly makes sense that variable smell perceptions governs what regular folk like or dislike.

Friend 4 has suggested that maybe the impulses are being redirected to the wrong bit of my brain, mentioning that I am rather on the synesthetic side. Synesthesia is interpreting one sense as another, most famously seeing letters/numbers as linked to colours. I do this a bit, but in particular, I have a very strong visual map of how time works, in blocks and boxes; even with which way I'm "facing" at any one time. You think this'd help my disorganisation...but it's not conscious.

So maybe if my mental circitry is already miswired, that explains where the smells are going. Charming: my brain resembles my bedroom. Wikipedia suggests the death of receptor neurons, brain injury, and an early onset of Parkinson's or Alzheimers. Woo!

Clash (among others) has pointed out that if I can't smell, surely I can't taste? I evidently am able to taste, but I now wonder if my experience of food is different. It's been observed that I have very plain tastes, and am happy to eat the same meal ad nauseam. And now I wonder: does this explain why I've always preferred demolishing plates by food "type", because I wouldn't get a taste experience at all if I took carbs and veg it in turns? Why I've never found food all that interesting? Is this why I don't do spices? Is the taste of regular food as vivid to you lot as spice is to me? Or why I love the intense hit of sherbert, or hyper-masochistically-dark dark chocolate? And now I wonder: Would caviar taste of anything to me? Are my favourite foods determined chiefly by what I can smell? If I did crack, would it have any effect?

A very interesting article on the Guardian confirms my theory about spice, and reminded me that I've never really distinguished between different types of tea. It really just tastes like nice hot water to me - I definitely can't smell it. Nor coffee. Another article by a hyposmic claims it made his vegitarianism easier, althought I would disagree with this on a personal level. One of the most sure-fire indicators that I am really, really hungry is that I start craving meat like mad, normally those cheap hotdog sausages. Mind you, I now doubt that I could ever tell the taste difference between beef, chicken, and the rest. The fact I have to presume there's a difference seems like confirmation...and a third article, most interesting of all, written by a normal bod whose smell has gone due to a cold. It displays correlations with what I regularly experience - especially red wine, water (dude, does water smell/taste of anything?) and onion. The article I mentioned above, by someone who lost smell late in life, confirms my theory about unsubtle lemon and sherbert, while suggesting my dislike of mashed potato and peas could also be related. 50% of the Ben and Jerry's creative team is ansomnic, which is why their ice cream is so darn good: it heavily relies on image and texture.

I've also found a blogger who, perhaps obsessively, discusses his condition. Although it came to him later in life, so I can see why it would make such an impression. If given the chance - and there are Places That Can Do Stuff About Stuff Like This - would I take it? Resounding no. I can't imagine it would be anything but agony, irritating, interrupting agony, like hanging TMI bunting all over the world. But for a day, I'd definitely like to see what I was missing.

I'd also like a bash at a blindfold smell'n'taste test - I am positive that, exposed to a series of well known smells, I would mega-fail at identifying most of them. I am more confident with identifying food; but if you blended them, so they no longer had texture or shape, I don't think that would be so easy. It would still be a fun afternoon.

(incidentally, pregnancy seems like a worse and worse idea - apparently the strains it puts on your body are well known for knocking your biology out of whack. This includes the appearance of coelic disease, and the sudden reappearance of a sense of smell...)