When I was a child like most kids I had secret dens where I felt safe. As I thought about them, the railway bridge, the bombed out house, the space under the shed in the back garden, I suddenly smelt an old familiar smell of diesel mixed with carbolic soap and I was instantly transported to where as both child and young adult I felt safest.

It was always the same. Anytime from five o'clock on a weekday, all day Saturday and Sunday, I could go there and realize I was always secure. I don't know when it all started but that smell and the feeling of shelter are amongst my earliest memories. It didn't matter what happened, whether I had been scrammed by my cat Patch for being a bit too rough in play. Or perhaps the boy next door, Winston, had rebelled at last to my bossy ways. He was a year younger than me and a lot more placid. I was the boss and whenever we played games I was always the teacher and he always got a smack with the ruler. I'm ashamed now of my behaviour then but at the time it seemed such fun! Or more seriously, my mother or my older brother were in hospital (neither enjoyed good health) and I was afraid my world was falling about my ears I knew I could go to my refuge and be at peace.

As I grew I didn't need quite so much the feeling of protection but always I knew where I was really safe. Of course as I grew the problems became more serious (sometimes really frightening) - the time my friend and I were attacked coming home from a youth club meeting and I beat the attacker off with my umbrella. I was very surprised how much wallop I packed for a skinny girl as I was then and how it wasn't at the point of the attack I felt worse but afterwards when I had time to think about what might have been. There was the occasion when my mother went into hospital and we were told it was touch and go, how I needed my sanctuary then.

More frighteningly was the instance when my brand new, desperately wanted baby girl was whisked away from me after birth as she could neither feed nor did she have other essential bodily functions. For several days it was a really tense time but strangely I only had to get a hint of the carbolic soap and I was transferred to my sanctuary instantly.

I was so protected there. I believed that no one or nothing could harm me then. It was a marvellous feeling.

Where was my place of safety? I'm sorry didn't I tell you? It was in my father's arms. He drove a lorry for a living and always used carbolic soap to clean himself before coming home from work. The mixture of faint diesel and carbolic from his dungarees was my sign that not anything could hurt me. I was safe, with Dad, in his arms. Dad died unexpectedly in 1972 and there have been storms, disappointments and frights too numerous to mention since then. I have been lucky to find love, comfort and succour from other sources but there can never be another refuge like Dad's arms nor the feeling that nothing will touch me, not this side of Heaven.

Zoe Powell