Sometimes I stood on the automated line, watching the robot lines of empty jars as they shuttled into position under the nozzle to receive their ration of pink or yellow or pale-green sludge. I had to check the fill levels and push rogue bottles back into the endless procession. At other times I was on labelling. There was a rudimentary machine that slapped gummed squares on to the prone bottles as they shuttled along the line. The products were the cheapest, and the matching labels were crudely printed lettering decorated with coarse line drawings of lavender or roses or ferns. I thought how easy it would have been to design better-looking packaging and passed the time by dreaming up artistic ideas.

Sometimes shorter runs of the product had to be hand-labelled and I would stand with two or three of the other temporaries, working through a pile of labels and an army of blank bottles. Or I would be given a plastic jug and a crate of empties and told to hand-fill a couple of gross of bottles from a barrel of scented stuff. The worst job on the line was packing finished product into cardboard cartons. The boxes were flat-packed and had to be made up by hand, and the rough card edges cut my inexperienced fingers. The stretching and reaching with handfuls of bottles was physically tiring, and it didn’t leave me with enough energy even to daydream. I listened to pirate Radio Caroline – I had no choice, it blasted through the factory on speakers and the line workers sang along and shouted over the noise – and tried to let the day pass as if I were watching it from somewhere outside myself.

Ted was the Restall & Jackson in-house perfumer. ‘A gifted nose, with a West End reputation.’ That’s how I overheard Mr Eddy Restall describe him to a visiting buyer who was being shown around the factory. The buyer raised his eyebrows and glanced back over his shoulder to where Ted was working. The offices were up a metal staircase from the floor, with dusty windows looking over the line, but Ted’s cubicle led straight off the floor. He wore a white overall and sat at a bench surrounded by his perfumer’s organ, the stepped semicircle of brown bottles. Usually he was frowning and writing notes, with his mouth twisted as if there were a smell he didn’t like right under his nose.

I knew that the dirty-floored cubicle, with its flimsy metal cabinets and filthy enamel sinks stained with green dribbles like snot, was a long way from the swooning elegance of Scentsation, even from the real old business of Phebus Fragrances. But I still felt stubbornly proud of my father’s gift. It was just too rarefied for this tin shed, that’s all.