Soapy fish

Part of a conversation we were having the other day triggered a childhood memory illustrating an almost-forgotten art in modern households. Thrift. For your own amusement, try explaining this to one or more young people between the ages of 10 and 25, and watch their faces as the disbelief and incredulity mounts at the realisation that anyone could have gone to so much trouble to save such small sums of money.

When I was a kid, soap was - relatively - expensive. Or at least, that's what my Mum told me (hence the tag). So it was important to make it last as long as possible. Naturally, that didn't involve NOT washing - being thought dirty was a crime (or even, a SIN!) even worse than being thought a spendthrift - but it did mean hanging on to each bar of soap until it was totally used up, and we had an ingenious method of using those last tricky little slivers that could slip out of your hand and hide on bathroom floor, behind the pedestal. A soap fish. Made of synthetic sponge in the shape of a fish - it had eyes, and fins, and everything - you could shove your soapy remains up its jacksie and use it to wash in the bath. And I did. Pretty much until I started big school. I clearly remember the frustration of not being able to actually play with the damn thing in the bath - it was a fish, after all - on account of that dissolving its soapy guts too quickly for True Thrift(*). No, it was for washing, not for playing. That was made abundantly clear.

The soapy sponge fish (or was it a spongy soap fish?) fell apart eventually, and my Mum was gutted to discover she couldn't find a replacement anywhere. It was OK though, because by then I was old enough to learn the trick of "gluing" the old sliver of soap to a new bar, carefully sticking down the edges all round so you didn't accidentally knock the parasitic little piece off its bigger, younger brother. Waste not, want not, as was constantly drummed into me as soon as I was old enough to hear.

Incidentally the "importance" of not wasting soap - engraved deeply as it was on my psyche as a child - stayed with me long after it should have done. I think I was in my early forties, stood at the bathroom sink gluing some soap together when I suddenly thought "what the FUCK am I doing?"

(*) Could be a good title for a movie. What do you think?