Imperial What?

Soap is a commodity we all, (well nearly all, there was this bloke who worked at the Centre who didn’t often) encounter every day, and yet very little is said or spoken about it, outside advertising agencies at any rate; and soap companies, presumably. Mention soaps up the pub and the conversation will quickly move on to Eastenders or Coronation Street, or Neighbours or Emmerdale if you're really unlucky. In nearly 40 years of happy pub-going, I have never been involved in a conversation about soap. But I think about it a bit, as must anyone, I suppose, who buys the stuff.

Perhaps it is rather unmanly to bother about soap. Tough men who like football should accept what their good womenfolk have provided and not think about it; or buy bog-standard stuff, (paradoxically not able to be described as ‘toilet soap’) which used to be called carbolic, and accounted for the overpowering smell associated with school washrooms and the like.

But I do not have any womenfolk, good or otherwise, or any other folk, come to that, as I live contentedly alone, and have done for many years. So it follows that if there is any soap in my bathroom, I have to put it there, which means that I have to buy it, and therefore choose it. I do have a cleaning-lady but she just irons and er, cleans, using the stuff that I buy. I suppose I could just pick up the cheapest on offer when it is time to buy more soap, but I just can’t operate like that when buying things. For better or worse, I have to make decisions about what I bring home from the supermarket.

And one thing I have realised is that, although I have lived in Spain for a long time, I have never found a brand of soap that I actually like. Spain has a much more limited choice in these matters than Britain: there can’t be more than about ten frequently-met-with brands, and I am not mad about any of them. But then, you may say, perhaps I am hard to please. But no. When I go to Britain and wander round Sainsburys, Morrisons or Tescos, or pop into Superdrug, I am amazed at the variety on offer, and there are soaps which I actively like and occasionally buy a 4-pack of to bring back to Madrid. Shield and Camay I have always liked, the former for its invigoratingly attractive scent, the latter for the creaminess of the texture, so there we are.

However, recently I did something I had never done in my life before. I bought some Imperial Leather. Even as I write, its scent is detectable from the bathroom, a few feet away to my left.

For I have never liked it. To begin with, I have always thought the name to be rather strange. ‘Imperial’ is old-fashioned, just as it was in the ‘fifties when I used to have to use it in the homes of various uncles and aunts. That, though, would be no reason to drop the word from the brand name, there is far too much unnecessary and costly changing of things just because they are deemed not modern enough (and why, as Jeremy Hardy asked a year or so ago, is 'Snickers' thought to be more of a market winner than 'Marathon'?). No, I don’t mind a soap being called Imperial, although I doubt whether people lie back and think of the Empire every time they use it in the bath. The main associations of the word ‘imperial’ are, I would have thought, those tiny white mint sweets, a march by William Walton called Crown Imperial, Little (Lil) Anthony and the Imperials, and for some of us, a notorious ‘sixties night spot situated precariously athwart a bridge over the canal in Nelson, near Burnley, always referred to as t’ Imp, in reality the Imperial Ballroom.

But it is the ‘leather’ bit that mystifies me. In class sometimes, we ask the students if they regard certain words as positive or negative. Sometimes it is not enough just to explain the meaning of a word as words like ‘clever’ carry a negative charge unless used very carefully. Now ‘leather’ can be either positive or negative, depending on the context: leather goods, jackets, expensive handbags and so forth, are positive, as even if you are not interested in possessing them, you would not usually regard them as repulsive, unless you are one of those people who wear biodegradable shoes made out of potato peelings, or whatever. But in the delicate area of skincare, as it is now called, into which the makers of soaps like Camay put so much thought, with their creaminess and gentleness and so on, I submit that ‘leather’ is a non-starter. Leathery skin is that which has been tanned and battered so much by extreme weather conditions that it looks unattractive, and would not be pleasant to the touch. So that is one mystery.

There is another mystery too. Imperial Leather soap has a small black and red label attached to it. It reminds you that what you are using is Imperial Leather. It also adds (just been to check) that it is manufactured by Cussons. I always thought that it was unnecessary, and anyway the label also rubbed in a not-too-pleasing way against you when you were soaping yourself. So Imperial Leather was one brand I avoided whenever I bought soap when I lived in England, and it has never been on my ‘wish you could get it here’ list of British items that all of us expats operate one of.

Imperial Leather, though, certainly does not avoid me. When I visit Britain, I stay with my brother and his wife, or my cousin Elizabeth. I also visit an old friend from university days who lives in Scotland; and I drop in on other friends in Scotland. There's a married couple I met at university (and who met each other, of course) who live on the Wirral; they have grown-up children with their own spouses and homes, and I visit them, too. There's an old school friend who lives in Lancashire; (and with whom I used to visit t’ Imp on Saturday nights); and there's a young ex-colleague from the Centre who now lives in London. Almost to a man (or woman) the soap they have selected to greet you when you reach the bathroom for the morning’s ablutions is Imperial Leather. As these people have little in common apart from knowing me well enough to let me stay with them, I find this impossible to comprehend, but then shrug my bare shoulders and start soaping myself, taking care to keep the label on the outside, preparatory to shaving. And it was ever thus, in the old days my mother frequently bought it, and therefore all of her sisters (and she had quite a lot) copied her (or she had copied them, whatever). The wretched stuff is unavoidable in my life; but at least I wasn’t going to succumb and buy any myself.

But I have succumbed. At my brother’s last month, there was an agreeable orangey smell about both the upstairs and the downstairs washing facilities, and the cause of it was the new orange-flavoured Imperial Leather, and very nice it is too, if you remember about the label, especially when having a shower.

Incidentally, I bought the pack at a large branch of Boots, where the pleasant motherly lady at the cash register asked me if I had a Boots card, or whatever it is called. Thereby hangs a tale, as well.