Sunday 25 September 2011

Next to Godliness - a Cautionary Tale

When it comes to buying essential items, I am a traditionalist. If it was good enough for me in childhood and it still exists, I'll buy it.  So when I needed something as basic as a bar of soap recently, I pretty soon narrowed the choice down to two that met these criteria - Pears Transparent Soap and Wright's Coal Tar.  Unable to decide between them and being a big spender, I bought one of each.
I remember both brands from my childhood.  Pears brings back memories of the advertisements featuring the painting Bubbles by Millais; and every year, there was a "Miss Pears" competition to find a brand ambassador.  It wasn't exactly the X Factor but it entertained us at the time.  Wright's Coal Tar soap was less strongly marketed but had an image of a no-nonsense, manly approach to cleanliness.  Women might smell of Pink Camay containing some fancy perfume or other (worth 9 guineas an ounce, according to the adverts).  But give us men a sniff and you'd get a whiff of good old coal tar - not that we necessarily knew what coal tar was.
Anyway, arriving home clutching my two contrasting bars of traditional cleanliness, I took the trouble to look at the words on the packaging and began to wish that I hadn't.
Firstly, Pears.  Well, at least the soap is still transparent but there are a few things about it that aren't.  The ingredients, for one.  Old Andrew Pears who started the business back in the late 18th century for sure didn't put etidronic acid in his early bars; and I'm pretty certain that butylated hydroxytoluene was unknown to him, as would have been many of the other 20 or so ingredients.  A bit of research reveals that, up until 2009, the soap was made to a reasonably traditional formula that old Mr. Pears might possibly have approved of - but not any more.
And then there's Wright's Coal Tar soap.  Same problems. Its founder, William Valentine Wright, died in 1877, ironically of a skin infection.  He probably wouldn't recognise the current version of his most famous product, not least because it doesn't actually contain any coal tar.  That may, of course, not be a bad thing.  The European Union has banned the use of coal tar in non-prescription products.  But, instead of being up-front about this, the manufacturers call it "a traditional soap with a coal tar fragrance".  Innocents like me are naive enough to be fooled into thinking that the product is basically the same as it ever was, instead of being stuffed with ingredients that give it a coal tar smell without  the actual coal tar. 
Oh, and by the way, Pears soap is now made in India and Wright's is made in Turkey.  So they've each travelled many hundreds of miles before they plop down into my bath trailing their carbon footprint.
There it is.  I'm not suggesting that either of these products is better or worse than others on the market, just that, if you want to buy a traditional product, maybe it's best to check the label first.

Sunday 11 September 2011

9/11 and after

Ten years on, there's not really very much new one can say about 9/11; and the little there is, the media have milked for all it's worth.
So I'll just suggest listening to this song by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's difficult not to be moved by the song and by the observation in the comments about all the cars that were tagged at the train station parking lot so they wouldn't get towed.  They were left there waiting for the return of people who commuted in to WTC on the Hudson line that day - and then.around October 2001 they were finally taken away.
Mary Chapin Carpenter talks about the song here.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Crickileaks - a review

Reading Crickileaks by Tyers and Beach is like watching Sachin Tendulkar bat. Everything looks so easy. Sachin identifies the line and length of the ball, moves the feet into position, swings the bat and away goes the ball. Oh, look, there’s no fielder there – four! Alan Tyers is similarly able to score with apparent ease.
In Tyers’ case, the simple method starts withs identifying an Ashes hero. He spots their (often obvious) Achilles heel, exaggerates it and then puts words into their mouth that illustrate their weakness in an amusing way.
So Mike Gatting is obsessed with food and gets bowled by Shane Warne because he visualises him as a sherry trifle. Shane Warne likes making money and has an errant texting finger; and Mitchell Johnson is a rather dim child bullied by all around him and in a permanent state of bewilderment.
OK, let’s admit that, just as Tendulkar can get out for 91 when going for his 100th hundred, Alan Tyers too can nod. Geoffrey Boycott’s encounters with Bob Dylan didn’t quite work for me and Ashley Giles’ jealousy of Monty Panesar seemed off the mark. As for the illustrations by Beach, they add value without inducing the same degree of mirth as the words.
Overall, however, this is a highly amusing series of vignettes, well up to the standard of WG Grace Ate my Pedalo, the previous Tyers and Beach offering. I look forward to the next venture. Will Mr. Tyers perhaps be brave enough to enter into the murky world of match fixing?