Doesn’t Gel
I’ll tell you something that rankles me about once a month; where did shower gel come into the picture? At what point in life’s relentless drive to meet the needs of our hunger for convenience, was it decreed that we needed another bottle of soapy nonsense on the edge of the bath? I have NEVER bought shower gel. I am not entirely sure I’d even be able to operate the endless parade of inventive dispensers it comes in. The hooks for hanging on the shower head, gewgaw lids that turn INTO hooks, little pursed-rubber-lip nozzles, anatomical rubber grips…
I’m very much aware of our mindless quest to simplify, and inject the last iota of convenience into, the most pedestrian of tasks. I make a concerted effort to ignore many of these dumb-ventions because I think some tasks in life are quite enjoyable. From tying one’s laces to brushing one’s teeth – there’s good to be had in the little figurative journeys in life’s little tasks, beauty quite apart from their destination. It’s good for the soul, for example, to roll a cigarette – that’s why hand rolling machines have come and gone in an array of designs yet failed to replace the human claw. The little rituals of life seem to have become, somewhere along the way, an enemy. Life’s routines are now something to be phased out, invented around. The mystery of just what, exactly, we’re doing with all the time they save us are another article entirely.
I recently bought an electric toothbrush after poo-pooing the idea for an age and I have to admit that at first I saw myself a fraud in the medicine cabinet mirror. I’ve been able to justify it by two things I’ve noticed:
1. I finally do not feel the inexplicable need to run the tap while brushing – a peccadillo previously addressed herein
2. I’ve made whole new little ritual out of brushing my teeth using my Braun.
I’m still a little bothered by needing to consume electricity to scrub my fucking teeth but I’m the owner of an increasingly dilapidated porcelain set and anything I can do to salvage any part of them, anything that will somehow spur me to go at them a bit more often and in a more hygenist-approved method, I’ll go after it these days.
But back to shower gel. What the fuck even is it? It appears to be sold as much in flavours as scents – I get near ravenous looking at the varieties of it on supermarket, chemist or Bodyshop shelves. You could, I often muse to myself “put that fucker on a bowl of ice cream.” I confess that this is a two part rant – the very reason I notice this soapy sauce on a regular basis is that I’m not a shower person at all. I like a bath. Boyhowdy do I like a bath? And yes I like a little bit of something in my bathwater, even. Call me delicate but I like a bubble in my bath – primarily for the fact it means you have to clean the bath less regularly (that’s as yet a little ritual I’m no way keen to get at more often) but it kind of softens your skin, too, eh? But let me tell you this – you try and find a bottle of herbal bath soak (Radox, say, or Badedas) nowadays. The best of British luck to you in your quest. Why? For its place has been usurped completely by Goddamned Coconut Cream, Bergamot and Caramel shower gel or Kiwi Lemon Ragout Enriching Shower Treatment.
I do miss Tesco for little things now and then and one is definitely the fact they have as much room for Radox powders and lotions as they have for Lynx’s most recent ridiculous incarnation of shower gel. In Japan, I loved being able to go to the chemist and get every type and level of herbal bath treatment from cheap and cheerful sachets of Lion Brand pine scented synthetic salts, to handmade high-end therapeutic salts that did actually make your skin tingle and your musculature and bones fair sing in harmony in the afterglow. The Japanese still know how to bathe, man.
It’s all connected: that we have made a rushed, entirely standing trudge out of our daily ablution that was once a relaxing, private, sensuous time-out on our back every evening. That we’ve then invented a gaudy, florid sauce to be dispensed by violent squeezing and vigorous application to accompany showering where once we had a herbal, natural salt that had some benefit, some comfort to us. This is the face of change, folks.
It’s enough to make you get into your bath and stay there until convenience disappears up its own non-drip, rubber-orifaced, upside down, hook-handled arsehole.
