Brass polish and shower gel

28 april 2014

Update by Peter (April 27th):
“The day before yesterday we anchored of the coast of the isle of Alderney. A wee little island that could not have been more British in its appearance. The only possible place where one had a more distinct British feel might have been the Falklands, it seems the more distance a people have from their cultural capital, the more they dive into stereotyping. Perhaps these customs offer comfort of the sort that can only come from being ‘home’, or perhaps the British are just funny that way. None the less it feels as though, even on the edge of the world the Queen is watching you.
I am always intrigued by such instances. For example, commercial products like particular brands of deodorant, shower gel and brass polish that one can buy even in the most remote of places such as for instance the island Ascension. I encountered a particular brand of bathsoap twice, once on Ascension, and just a few days ago on Alderney. To some people that might not seem strange at all, but I can’t help the feeling that it’s somehow peculiar that one might find luxury products such as these, in places as remote as those. Of course everywhere were there are people there is room for these things, so looking at it from that point of view one might just call it good business and be done with it.
Just a few weeks ago there occurred one of those occasional slight panics, the sort of panic that can only come from being at sea to long. The Brasso brass polish stock was dwindling. Shouts were uttered, discussions arose and not before long some of the crewmembers took action and hid the precious last 6 bottles of Brasso. The theory being that by doing this we had to use the inferior Argentinean product and could save up the Brasso for the last big round of polishing just before entering Rotterdam. These events took place somewhere before Ascension and combined with the pending potato shortage and the other things that occupied our minds one might understand that we considered ourselves in dire straits, for where on earth could we obtain Brasso.
Not to worry though, because as soon as we landed on Ascension two bottles of the shiny stuff were smiling at us from the shelves of the dramatically understocked supermarket, just across from the shower gel.”