Soap

From the BBC News website comes this disappointingly concise piece on a subject that was surely worth a couple of thousand more words - the deplorable ascendancy of liquid soap over old-fashioned bars of the stuff. The BBC News piece does effectively marshal the principal arguments in favour of the soap bar, all of which are strong and cogent, but I would have preferred a deal more depth, a range of supportive testimony, and perhaps a visit to a supermarket or pharmacy to inspect the situation and gather a little vox pop. In my experience it's becoming increasingly hard to find a bar of soap - certainly anything beyond a handful of brands - whereas the liquid stuff dominates the shelves with an ever-expanding array of scents, colours, antibacterial claims and other gimmicks. There is of course one place where it is possible to find a truly dizzying range of solid soaps - the unaccountably successful chain that calls itself Lush. I am not, however, tempted by their foul-smelling, candy-coloured, randomly shaped chunks of whatever the heck their stuff is made of. It will indeed by a cold day in Hell when I set foot in one of their ghastly shops. By the way, whatever happened to soap on a rope?