Craving a shave
Creature of habit, I
might well be and more, but I cannot really say. Yet, I find that I have done things for as long as I can remember out of nostalgia and just
familiarity. In my youth, I would watch my father shave having mixed a powdered
depilatory with water into a paste and applied it to his face, he was not a
razor kind of man to my memory. Magic Shaving Powder it
was.
After shaving, he
would slap on Old Spice
aftershave, I did not particularly acquire that tradition for my time. Now, I
did not begin to grow a beard until I was in my 30s, a kind of late development
not particularly congruent with my birth or my reaching puberty. I almost thought
I would never have that rite of passage defining manhood or otherwise. Magic
came to my aid for a while.
A whiff of
masculinity
At my neighbour’s, an
agemate who I visited often and that’s how I grew to be a fan of Ray Parker Jr, though, for deodorant, he used Brut
by Fabergé original deodorant, now owned by Unilever. It had that easy yet
light scent to it, that when I saw it about 2 decades ago, I did not hesitate to
get it and I have used it since then.
It is now 26 years
ago since I first visited Berlin where I met up with an old friend who was
living at Karlshorst in
the east and a rather daring place to be at night. He was going out with
someone who worked in a perfumery, and he had a bag of bottles of cologne, eau
de toilette, scents, fragrances, and perfumes, some that stank worse than a
skunk.
I found the boss
Asked me to go
through the bag and choose whatever I fancied and this was just when celebrity
piss water was gaining some sort of prominence, but I was not into any of that.
Of the lot, I chose Hugo Boss
Number One eau de toilette and that has stood the test of time. Though for years,
it has been made in England but unavailable in the stores.
I took to getting a
bottle at the duty-free shops in Charles de Gaulle (CDG) International Airport,
Paris where I have seen the price go up from around €35 to just under €75. I
began to worry when I was running out, though I seemed to have a bottle to
spare just because of the scarcity. Then on Saturday, I caught a glimpse of the
packaging in my local Superdrug store, though that was on my way out, the price
at £56, strewth!
Here I was
considering returning some other time to buy it when I ventured on Amazon and
it was going for £33.98 to be delivered the next day. It was a bargain and much
as I like to shop in the high street, there are times, shopping online is just
prudent and so I have a good stock of my eau de toilette for the foreseeable future.
Habit and creature meet in one situation.
 |
| Magic shaving powder. |
 |
| Old Spice Original After Shave. |
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