The smell of old sacks

In the lean-to shed there were some old sacks, a few of them hanging on the wall. Smell of onions, mixed with the faint odour of rotten cabbages, combined with that indefinable “sack” smell. When was the last time these sacks were moved – ten years ago? Twenty years? The lean-to shed had an atmosphere of intense silence, as if it somehow comprised a pocket of forgotten time. The smell of old sacks seemed a distillation of the past.