Coal-tar nightmare

I was browsing in Myers of Keswick the other day (a British import store in NYC) and I came across a bar of Wright's Coal-Tar Soap. For old time's sake I had to buy it.

Coal-tar soap, for me, was one of those quintessential things growing up because I used to get excema and my Mother was convinced that coal-tar soap was a cure all for any skin ailment all the way up to leprosy. This is much the same way she was convinced that calamine lotion could do anything from soothe a Midgie bite to curing a sort throat to driving the demons from your immortal soul.

So anyway, I take my coal-tar soap home and the next morning I am taking a shower with it. The first thing I notice is that the bar looks different, I remember it being a kind of tea color but slightly clear (like Pears soap); this bar is yellow and solid like the kind of cheap soap you used to see in high school toilets.

The second thing I notice is that the soap doesn't appear to be any different from a regular bar of soap, other than the sweaty coal-miner scent that my wife says makes her want to puke. It appears that there is no significant benefit to your skin.

Weird... I remember this stuff being great.

It's then that I look at the packaging and notice that it says "Coal-tar scented soap" under the Wrights logo.

What the fuck? So I go online and find this wikipedia page where the last paragraph says: "The soap is now made by Accantia and is called Wright’s Traditional Soap. As European Union directives on cosmetics have banned the use of coal-tar in non-prescription products, the coal tar derivatives have been removed from the formula, leaving the soap somewhat like of a shadow of its former self".

Arrrrrggghhhhhh! The government is now telling you what you can wash your balls with!

I think I am starting to go mad because the more someone tells me that it is for my own good, the less I want to believe them. Especially if it involves gorvernment regulation.

The other instance this made me think of is newspaper wrapping for your fish and chips, Last time I was home in Scotland I mentioned to somebody that no chippy seems to use newspaper to wrap their chips now, it is all plain paper or a fake newspaper wrapper, I was then told that the use of newspaper to wrap chips had been banned.

Whether this is true or not I don't know but what I do know is that the newspaper gave the fish and chips a particular smell and taste that isn't there anymore. On top of that you'd have something interesting to read while you were eating your dinner. It might be the only time you ever see some drunk working class guy reading the Financial Times.

Maybe I am just getting older and coming down with a nostalgia disease, after all there was a time when my Grandad, in the absence of toilet paper, would have ripped up pages of old newspaper with a bit of string holding them together hanging next to the bog for you to wipe your arse on, and that wasn't particularly fun. However when you think logically about it, it was an early form of recycling and one that would hurt too much to go back to, okay, well maybe it will hurt if you have hemorrhoids but that's another story....