Soap, soap and the death penalty...

Soap has been around since time immemorial. I don't need to tell you anything about its production and use - if you're interested, you can find out more about it on Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seife#Geschichte_der_Seife).

When I was a child, I used to wash my hair with a shampoo in the absence of a shampoo. I washed my hair with toilet soap. A bad mistake, my hair became completely matted and I couldn't avoid having it cut off almost bald. What a shame that was! From then on, I didn't think much of soap and those around me thought I was a boy. From then on, I only washed myself with shower gels and proper shampoos and they had to be labelled "mild" or pH-neutral, otherwise they wouldn't get on my skin. You can invest time and money in buying the right product, especially if you have a tendency to blemishes like me. At times I looked like a mutated toadstool and my only hope was my mother's prophecy that this would disappear once I had passed puberty. I'm still waiting for that day today. But in the meantime, my opinion of soap has changed fundamentally.

About 10 years ago, I met an Italian computer scientist who boiled his own soap. That really impressed me. His family had an oil mill in central Italy and produced olive oil. This gave him access to the highest quality raw materials and his soap was truly magical. After a few days of use, my skin was silky smooth and free of any impurities. When the supply of soap I had hoarded from this acquaintance ran out, I tried my luck as a soap maker myself. So I procured the necessary ingredients, such as soda and olive oil, and read through various instructions that I had googled. After buying the rest of the essentials, I put on a plastic apron and gloves, put on my safety goggles and got down to soap-making. I felt like Miraculix preparing the magic potion.

My soaps were really nice to look at, as I had bought extra pretty moulds from Milkyway Molds, but in use they were totally disappointing.

So it didn't help, I had to wash my way through the products of various soap manufacturers until I found the good piece that could keep up with Paolo's own creation.

Savon extra doux surgras from Le Petit Olivier doesn't smell particularly good - just like unscented soap - and is olive green in colour. My flannel is always yellowish afterwards - no, it's not the dirt, but the colourings that are added to the soap so that even the last customer believes that it really contains olive oil and not cheap beef tallow. But the skin! It feels wonderfully soft and silky... Try it - you'll be amazed! Where can you get it? In France or, if you ask nicely, from me....

Soap as a term is not only used as a means of cleaning. At least without water as an aid - soap opera or, translated into English, soap - you also get soaped up properly. There are loads of soaps on TV these days, you know, people who have a film crew accompany them in their everyday lives and give their two cents on the individual sequences. DMAX, for example, entertains me with various soaps such as Fast'n Loud, Naked Survival, Alaskan Bush People and not forgetting the used car professionals. Soap for the eyes - it doesn't sting as much and doesn't wash clean, but it does thoroughly fill the head. Nothing about switching off, at least not yesterday. It was about an unknown namesake on death row in some prison in the USA. Douglas Feldman was a bright Texan with a summa cum laude degree from what-knows-which university in the United States, who went berserk and for no reason at all sent two lorry drivers to the afterlife. Terrible for the stunned bereaved and terrible for the mother of this poor creature. Death penalty yes or no? I have my own little theory, but maybe another time...

Conclusion: I should probably stick to my favourite tearjerkers in the DVD player and leave the olive green soap in its bowl in the bathroom...