MY maw’s birthday is coming up. Like it does for most guys, this means a trip to get her chocolates, flowers, a card and maybe perfume of some description. What better way to celebrate the birthday of the woman who raised you, did everything for you and who only wants to see you happy than to get her the most uninspired array of gifts possible.

I often think back to the gifts I got her when I was a wee boy. One year, I simply drew her a picture of a dug. Not even our dug, just a generic dug. Another year, I decided to make her an ash tray out of modelling clay. I gave a woman who doesn’t smoke an ashtray for her birthday. In my defence, she did say she wanted a surprise.

But the one thing I’ve gotten her every year, without fail, for as long as I can remember, is, of course, a scented candle. They always have names like Cotton Breeze and Fluffy Morning and Gentle Mist. They have names like abstract concepts. Things that don’t smell or that can’t really be distilled into scented wax.

I’d quite like to smell a candle that smelled like things and places from my life. I’d especially like a candle that smells exactly like the Showcase cinema in Coatbridge. That place smells like something out of a dream. Its incredible.

When you walk in it’s the popcorn you smell first. Hot and sweet and comforting. Then there’s other undertones to it that I can’t quite quantify, that I can’t put my finger on. It’s a smell you will find nowhere else on earth and is totally unique to that single place.

No other cinema smells as good as the Showcase. Then when you go into the screen to see a film it’s a different smell. Not as good as the foyer but still amazing. I might write to a certain famous scented candle company and ask for a meeting with their master smelly candle maker so I can pitch them my ideas.

“Well,” I’d say to them. “Here’s the hing. Your candles are nice, aye. I’ll gie ye that. But wit does ‘Sunset Sand’ smell like? That’s nonsense.”

I imagine they’d look down their extremely sensitive nose at me and sigh. They’d tell me they spend years researching these smells, travelling the world, trying to fit the most beautiful aspects of the human experience into a jar that they can sell for fifteen quid a pop and that, quite frankly, I didn’t know what I was talking about.

“But yous pick weird stuff,” I’d say. “There’s better smells oot there than breezes and mists and cut grass and aw that. There’s mair tae life than that.”

“Like what?” they’d reply. Perhaps thinking that I’m about to deliver some profound insight I have about aromas.

“Come wi me and I’ll show ye.” I’d take them on a whistle stop tour of the places that house my favourite smells.

“This is the Showcase,” I’d say. We walk in the building and I tell them to take a deep sniff. Their face lights up. “This is incredible,” they say, stunned. “It’s just so… rich, deep,” another long sniff, “it’s beautiful”.

The mood is ruined slightly as they feel their feet sticking to the carpets. I usher them out before they can comment on it and ruin all my good work.

We head along the M8 now and into the city centre. I take them to the Blue Lagoon outside Central. The other Blue Lagoons in Glasgow smell class, this is true, but this one is the most special. The best smelling chippy in this fair city.

We walk in the door and the candle maker’s eyes start to fill with tears. “The smells, my word,” they say. “The oils, the vinegar, the batter. This is quite something. It’s perfect.” The alien ornament they have standing at the window is practically beaming at us. I also have to wipe away a tear. What an honour it is to be the person to introduce someone to these smells for the first time.

I have one more place to take them. Intermezzo Bar on Renfrew Street. The best smelling pub in the world.

“I want ye tae hawd yer breath until I say so, awrite?” I say to the candle maker. They take a seat upstairs while I get us a couple of pints.

I find them with their face turned shades of purple and blue I’ve never seen on a human being. “Right, calm doon,” I say as they gasp for air. “Take a sip ae that then have a sniff ae this place. Really take it aw in this time.”

They let the smells of the pub invade their nostrils. The smell of beer, of whisky, of the regulars and just a hint of tobacco wafts up around them, embracing them. The candlemaker is practically levitating now, reaching a state of euphoria thanks to the smells.

The candlemaker promises me that they’ll start work on a smells of Glasgow series of candles right away. You can all thank me later.