Lush confessions

My friend The Other Andrew just blogged about his aversion to the soap and cosmetics store, Lush.

I have to admit to really liking several Lush soaps, especially the exotic, incensy Karma, and the strongly green minty one covered in a black waxy coating, Demon in the Dark - but maybe only because it's inspired by the "Star Trek" episode with the mother horta ("The Devil in the Dark")? Warning: "Demon" can really sting sensitive bits in the shower - especially after a curry - but it's excellent when recovering from a hangover.


Karma (left) and Demon in the Dark (right)

How sensible was it when an overpowering Lush opened up next to the fast food hall in the Sydney CBD's Mid City Centre? I'm sure the other shopkeepers were thrilled when the lease ran out. (I took my Mum and Aunt into that Lush once - although they'd loved the products I'd bought them as gifts the previous Christmas, they both ran from the store holding their noses when confronted with so much fragrance en masse.)

My first ever trip into a Lush: the one in the Queen Victoria Building in about 1999. The shop assistants were happily plunging highly-perfumed bath bombs into cauldons of water, and it was amazing, jockeying for position so you could watch them bubbling away furiously (the bath bombs, that is, not the shop assistants).

The assistants were really pushing the real chocolate-fragranced massage bars, that first time. The bar looked and smelt exactly like a Cadbury's Top Deck. "Madonna was in just last week and this is what she bought," they exclaimed. Well, Madonna had been in town that week; who knows if she really bought anything at Lush, though. I did buy a (now-deleted) bar for myself, but never used it. It moved house with me, sat curling at the edges, all neglected under the sink in the bathroom - until I actually found it the other day: all off-cream colour, wizened up and chunky, with bits missing around the edges.

It was my old chocolate massage bar, or what was left of it! A cockroach had thought it looked and smelt exactly like a Cadbury's block of Top Deck, too.