When I was a whippersnapper of about 12 or 13 I would spend my pocket money on useless items that were completely befitting my age: Dolly magazine, blue Constance Carroll nailpolish, Bonne Bell lipgloss, Clearasil facewash. Apparently I used to record this inane information in a notebook too, but that's a whole nother story.
The other day, during one of my rare and dazed lunchtime wanders around the shops with a colleague, I found myself in Body Care (the poor man's Boots, literally). Having mere pennies left in my purse before payday, I chose to spend 88p on, er, hand soap. I mean please, am I showing my age here? To be fair, I did also buy a 99p lipgloss and a 99p nailpolish (some things never change) but what the hell was with spending priority pennies on something so... bland and middle-aged? Back in the day, hand soap was one of those things I just never got, both literally and figuratively speaking. What was wrong with the standard bar of Dove in a dish next to the tap? Was the transition from bar-of-soap to liquid soap a class thing that occurred after my dad remarried 'up' in the eighties, when all of a sudden I lived in a house with liquid soap in every bathroom? Was it the effect of going to the toilet at new posh grandma's place and seeing what wasn't the usual dirty, cracked bar of Sunlight that I saw at Nanna's?
Or was it an age thing, when I realised that each of my thirty-something friends had every conceivable variety of the pump dispensing polite-for-guests stuff in their cloakroom loos? I really am confused about the whole thing, in fact it concerns me that I have thought so much about it. Maybe that's an age thing too.
The other day, during one of my rare and dazed lunchtime wanders around the shops with a colleague, I found myself in Body Care (the poor man's Boots, literally). Having mere pennies left in my purse before payday, I chose to spend 88p on, er, hand soap. I mean please, am I showing my age here? To be fair, I did also buy a 99p lipgloss and a 99p nailpolish (some things never change) but what the hell was with spending priority pennies on something so... bland and middle-aged? Back in the day, hand soap was one of those things I just never got, both literally and figuratively speaking. What was wrong with the standard bar of Dove in a dish next to the tap? Was the transition from bar-of-soap to liquid soap a class thing that occurred after my dad remarried 'up' in the eighties, when all of a sudden I lived in a house with liquid soap in every bathroom? Was it the effect of going to the toilet at new posh grandma's place and seeing what wasn't the usual dirty, cracked bar of Sunlight that I saw at Nanna's?
Or was it an age thing, when I realised that each of my thirty-something friends had every conceivable variety of the pump dispensing polite-for-guests stuff in their cloakroom loos? I really am confused about the whole thing, in fact it concerns me that I have thought so much about it. Maybe that's an age thing too.
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