Who decided that pine = clean

Am I unaware of some natural predilection of pine trees to clear up after themselves? Is it perhaps some ancient tradition that before we had the chemical means to remedy bad smells, readily available pine leaves/sap/bark was used to reduce odours? I have never actually smelt a pine tree specifically, but I'm pretty sure I have never smelt anything like pine scented air freshener or toilet cleaner whilst wandering through the woods, so I can only assume that the smell we now call 'pine' is an extrapolation on the smell of some part of a tree rather than an accurate representation of the natural smell of pine.

I wonder if the other trees are aware that, by virtue of their exclusion from the world of cleansing products, they all fail to measure up to the sweet aroma of pine. Do they all feel hard done-by? Do pine trees get together and make fun of oaks because nobody wants their toilet to smell like an oak tree? Maybe Christmas trees and pine trees get together to enjoy their privileged status of being exalted by the human race either as decoration or nasal adornment. Perhaps they are shunned by other trees for aiding and abetting man despite his noted antagonism towards their fellow trees, which would be a shame seeing as Christmas trees never seem to survive the optimistic new year 'planting in the garden' and pine trees presumably don't even get near the reproduced smell that bears their name, let alone any royalties or even preferential treatment on the back of it.

Having thought about this for way too long, I am now considering a time consuming and ultimately pointless project to reveal the origins of pine scented products, so I can only hope that something else crops up to distract me before I end up wasting my time and boring other people rigid with my tales from the pine project.

Cereal dreams

I have always loved cereal. When I was younger, I didn't even give any other breakfast food a look in, always preferring a bowl of cereal and on one memorable occasion eating 12 Weetabix in a row at the age of around 7. A couple of years ago, my doctor recommended that I stop eating breakfast (on the grounds that I was throwing it straight back up almost every morning), which I did despite having it ingrained in my consciousness that I was relinquishing the most important meal of the day.

However, our return from the country where eggs seem only to occur in threes combined with a new working regime means that I am now firmly back in the camp of breakfast and the last delivery of shopping I received fulfilled a dream I had been having since deciding to revert back to my well trusted cereal lifestyle - a wall of cereal. That's not a metaphor - I literally had a recurring dream over the course of around 5 nights in which I owned a seemingly limitless supply of all kinds of cereal. Given the uplifting nature of this dream, I decided to make it a reality and I now have that wall of cereal adorning the top of the fridge which makes me happy just to see it.

I am a little saddened that Grape Nuts have bowed under the pressure of the modern world of breakfast snacks and instead of a small opening in the cardboard on the side of the box, they have now fallen in line with an inner bag and top opening system, but they taste just how I remember them so I can overlook their transgression. The other bonus is that cereal is a good way to up my calcium intake - I have never been able to drink milk neat, but my reignited love of cereal might also be the thing that stops be from crumbling from the insides like an ancient scroll when I reach the golden age at which these things start to happen.

Little did I realise that a wall of cereal could make me so happy, but clearly I am either a lot deeper or a lot more shallow than I ever realised.