SHOWER GEL

For a reason that's lost in the mist of time, we've got a small bottle of chocolate shower gel. Chocolate. It smells like chocolate and it looks like chocolate. I used it for the first time today. It might well be chocolate.

It does feel like a prank, doesn't it? I doubt it would take much practical nous to print up a label and squeeze some actual chocolate sauce into a bottle. And someone did give it to us - though admittedly, someone who I don't think is particularly into pranks. But it's possible I suppose that someone already did the fun bit and then passed it on to them for a laugh?

It's smooth stuff. When I squeezed it out, it plumped out into a brown pool in the palm of my hand, exactly the way a sort of free-flowing chocolate would. I used it, and then watched it rinse into the bathtub, worryingly brown, incongruous and troubling against the white. Perhaps in the 70s when bathroom suites were primrose yellow, avocado green or yes, chocolate brown, the introduction of such a rusty-looking fluid wouldn't have bothered anyone. Somehow though, it's all wrong isn't it, on the white porcelain. Without being too indelicate, brown shower gel's asking for trouble.

There is a way to tell whether it's chocolate or not. It moves like it, it looks like it, and it definitely smells like it. It didn't even occur to me to try tasting it today. To be honest, I'm not sure I want to - which probably is enough evidence, if I think about it, that my subconscious knows what's what. My skin does too, as it goes.