h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Warning: Contains Bog Roll and Poo (Sham and Real)

After yesterday's discussion about types of tissue available, on the way home I popped into the Co-Op as I'd noticed we were running low of milk this morning and I fancied buying some sausage rolls as I've not had sausage rolls for ages, and when I was there I thought I'd look to see what types of tissue they had on sale. (When I got home I discovered that my wife had earlier been to the Co-Op and had bought milk and sausage rolls too, as she'd fancied sausage rolls also.)

So the Co-Op had 4 types of tissue on sale:
Man-size tissues
Ultra-soft tissues
Aloe vera tissues
Balsam tissues

And this made me think - how do people go shopping? How do you decide what to buy? Obviously the first concern is often price as it is important to save money and see what is good value for money, not just on the end-product price but the itemised price – see: http://h2g2.com/h2g2/blobs/post_its_a_sign_5_BB.jpg for a typical itemised price spotted in the local Tesco. Yet if there's little price difference between a Fairtrade, ethically-sourced recyclable product and an unethical rival, I think most people would go for the ethical one as it is good to feel that in a small way you are making the a better place and helping real people rather than your hard-earned money ending up in the pockets of parasitic fatcats who don't pay taxes. Which is why people buy free-range s in such numbers (although the extent to which free-range eggs are actually what people think they are is another story).
And food of course is a minefield of trying to decide whether what you are eating is healthy – and if it is good for your waist it'll rot your teeth and vice versa, and everything has been unhelpfully Health rated in red amber green so if you're colour-blind you've no idea.

So let's put all that aside as that not what I'm interested in. Let's assume that you are in a shop where everything on sale is ethically-sourced and identically priced. Call it £ if you will. And I am buying some simple stuff for the bathroom – tissues, toilet paper, body wash and shampoo. How do I decide what to buy? And what does that say about me? And how do you decide which to get, and what does that say about you? There isn't a right or wrong answer, it is a case of being honest with yourself.

Now I'll be honest – when I buy every day stuff I want to buy something simple that'll do the job without fuss. I must admit I do look out for labels such as 'normal' and, yes, 'man' 'cos I want to buy the sort of thing a normal man would get, as I think of myself as a normal man (well, actually I think of myself as being a highly critical, laidback, cynical, optimistic, left-wing, introverted eccentric Caulkhead, but as that's normal for me 'normal man' is the closest label we get.)

So let's go back to the tissue aisle – how do I decide which of the 4 different types of tissue I saw on sale yesterday I'd get?

Option one - Ultra-soft tissues. I would never buy anything labelled with words such as 'soft' or 'sensitive'; it seems like an admission of weakness. So 'ultra-soft' tissues is definitely out.

Options two and three: Aloe vera and Balsam tissues. I want a box of tissues that is 100% dedicated to being tissues. A box of tissues that is 90% tissue and, say, 10% something else (a high enough percentage for them to bother mentioning it in any case), like aloe vera or balsam, is obviously inferior to a 100% dedicated tissue and if I buy this I'm being conned out of 10% of tissueness.

Option four: Man-size tissues – I have absolutely no idea what 'man-size' means in this context (see yesterday) but this box isn't trying to fob me off by including random rubbish. So this is probably the one I'd get.

Next up – we need to buy some toilet roll. This is much simpler – go for the bog-standard bog roll that's best value for money.
'Luxury toilet roll' – pah! No-one has ever said 'I had a diarrhoea all weekend, but my toilet paper made it a truly luxurious experience!' Similarly, what is the point of lemon-scented toilet paper? Are you going to use the toilet roll and then, instead of flushing it away, keep it with you to keep smelling the lemon freshness?
So I would always go for the standard toilet roll that has reasonably-sized sheets and a good number of sheets on the roll. And it has to be white, 'cos it could be a matter of life or death.
My has strongly advised me that due to my family's medical history, I should ensure I regularly check that I'm not experiencing rectal bleeding. While light, bright blood's probably fine, blackish blood isn't a good sign. Now if you're colour blind, trying to see if you've got blood in your stool and, furthermore, working out what shade of blood it is is virtually impossible. If you expect me to do that with technicolour toilet paper, you may as well just fit me for the coffin now. It makes you wonder, 'How many people die each year who wouldn't have died if they had bought white toilet paper?'

The penultimate item for our shopping basket is body wash. I never understood the point of body wash containing microbeads, which seemed to be in everything for a few months, before they realised the environmental devastation they caused . Before I realised that, I tried to avoid them as it just seemed to be a fad for washing yourself in grit for no apparent reason. I use the same logic as I do with shampoo.

With shampoo, I look for labels saying 'for normal hair' (or 'skin' in the case of body wash) – after all, my hair is normally how it normally is. I ensure I avoid anything that says 'sensitive', 'luxury' or (often smelly) additions that distract from the fundamental job of making dirty hair clean. I also dislike shampoo labelled 'for men'. I don't want a shampoo for men, I want a shampoo for me. Everyone else can go buy their own. (Obviously if my dad was visiting and, say, he unexpectedly fell in a puddle of mud and asked for a shower I'd let him borrow my shampoo, but the point remains valid.)

So that's my typical thought processes when buying a few basic household items all typed out for everyone to see. Do other people have similar strong, but probably daft, opinions when it comes to buying what they purchase, or is it just me?

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I definitely agree that some choice is good but sometimes there are just too many choices and that is not good...

"And food of course is a minefield of trying to decide whether what you are eating is healthy – and if it is good for your waist it'll rot your teeth and vice versa, and everything has been unhelpfully Health rated in red amber green so if you're colour-blind you've no idea."

Yes indeed Although you're probably not missing anything in relation to the traffic lights as it all seems rather random to me... I read somewhere that the idea is that you're not allowed to eat two red traffic lights in one day. If the number in the red traffic light is about 50% then that makes sense that two would be more than the day's allowance. However, the number in the red traffic light on a packet of crisps, say, is 9%, which befuddles my brain if I try to think about it too much...

It is fascinating indeed to contemplate the decisions we have to make when faced with strange choices.

I am a big fan of Ultra Soft Tissues but that's because they are particularly useful for me - in my youth I used to be full of allergies and/or colds so I went through a lot of tissues, and my poor nose ended up very sore. The advent of soft tissues in my teenage years made a massive difference so I wasn't Sasha the Red-Nosed Reindeer all the time. On the other hand I don't rate balsam tissues - I thought they would do me good because they would apply balm each time I used them rather than me relying on applying balm a couple of times a day, but whatever substance is in them just irritated my nose more. I'd not even noticed Aloe Vera tissues, but I think I would avoid them in case they were like Balsam tissues

In terms of toilet paper, I consider the best value to consist of the cheapest one that is able to withstand what it is intended for, rather than the very cheapest that disintegrates at the merest whiff of wee so you need to use twice as much of it and negate the value.

"No-one has ever said 'I had a diarrhoea all weekend, but my toilet paper made it a truly luxurious experience!"
No indeed - yes, even when I had norovirus my derriere was quite fine with ordinary toilet paper

"Similarly, what is the point of lemon-scented toilet paper? "
indeed

I am a bit of a sucker for 'For Men' products, as they give me a bit of an ego boost in the shower, but on the other hand they do have to be good as well as good looking... I tried a 'For Men' shampoo once and the only difference to the regular variety was that it was scented with some perfume that clashed with my deodorant so that was not worth it. The natural ingredients body wash that is identical to the regular variety except with 'For Men' written on it is much better value, though

The funny thing is that when I think about how I think, the more I think that I think in really daft ways and logical decisions aren't really logical any more. I've obviously unconsciously absorbed lots of nonsense over the years…

I must admit when I see the warnings on I tend to think, 'Ah, this has its highest rating of 10%, that means that if I don't eat anything else tomorrow it is perfectly fine for me to have ten of 'em.'

Vaseline from my nose's top tip
To the bottom of my lip
Saves the day
And takes sore dryness away.

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"The funny thing is that when I think about how I think, the more I think that I think in really daft ways and logical decisions aren't really logical any more. I've obviously unconsciously absorbed lots of nonsense over the years…"

Well said...

"I must admit when I see the warnings on I tend to think, 'Ah, this has its highest rating of 10%, that means that if I don't eat anything else tomorrow it is perfectly fine for me to have ten of 'em.'"

That makes sense to me on one level indeed... All we can do is aim for somewhere in between...

"Vaseline from my nose's top tip
To the bottom of my lip
Saves the day
And takes sore dryness away."

Vaseline was all the rage in the 1980s, but it wasn't enough to turn Sasha the Red Nosed Reindeer back into an elf like balm plus ultrasoft tissues does these days

I never realised that Vaseline was an 80s fashion statement I've often wondered how it got its name because you’d think it was a pottery term for, well, a line on a vase.
'On today's 'Time Team' we will discover some Greek black figure amphora that prove how extensive trade was in this area back in the 3rd Century BC, and admiring the superb workmanship, particularly the intricate Vaseline-inscribed geometric shapes around the rim…'

Update – this week's shampoo is labelled 'classic clean'. Which I must admit I like the sound of – 'cos at the end of the day I want my hair to be clean and, well, you just can't beat the classics, can you? Sounds simple and elegant. It probably contains exactly the same stuff as all the other labels on the bottles, but I think it sounds classy without being crowded.

I hope your nose is suitably -like this winter!

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Yes, vaseline is a good word indeed! "This has the typical vaseline for white ground amphorae of the period" I think the 'line' comes from Gasoline because it is Petroleum Jelly, but I'm not sure where the 'vase' comes from...

Yes, I go for 'classic clean' shampoo, too

Thank you! I managed to avoid the cold that went round in early October, but had a few sneezes when I realised I am allergic to a type of washing machine 'pod' (which is another consumable thing with too much choice - I usually stick to classic powder) but the soft tissues worked well

Hold the front page! Yesterday I saw that a major supermarket was making own-brand -scented toilet paper. 'Vegan friendly!' it boasted with a smiling apple on the packet. Obviously had I known there was -scented toilet paper I never would have dreamed of insulting the luxury toilet paper industry. In this day and age when the World Health Organisation says that global hunger continues to rise: http://www.who.int/news-room/detail/11-09-2018-global-hunger-continues-to-rise---new-un-report-says
It can only be comforting to know that there are, presumably, whole orchards dedicated to growing fruit you can wipe your bottom with.

Oh and they had instructions on the packet too: 'use only one wipe per full flush'. Is it just me or is the mad?

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