Oh! de Toillette

I had to moan about something or else I'd moan about the pain. Life is really very good at the moment, but I'm frustrated today so there.

I'm really fed up with washing. It uses up more energy than any other activity and I am very precious about doing it by myself. On occasions when help has been essential, I have absolutely loathed it. I realise people get used to far more intimate assistance, but still.

Of course, the first thing you learn when you have difficulty washing is that it doesn't matter as much as you imagined. In our culture, we're taught that daily washing is hygienic, sweating is unhygienic and we all ought to smell like rose-bushes as opposed to human beings.

In reality, the only important things are clean hands and clean teeth; proper hand-washing saves lives and thorough teeth-brushing saves your teeth falling out. If you never ever wash your body or your clothes and you live in unsanitary conditions, then there are other health risks and a significant pong. But no great harm can come to you if you don't bathe for a few weeks.

The second thing you learn is that the more you wash, the more you need to. This is partly psychological; we've all got an idea of what it feels like to be clean, and for some people the only satisfactory state is the one they experience between getting out of the shower and the point they start moving about again. I know at least one relatively inactive person who showers twice a day, so appalled is she by the experience of sweating.

Added to this is biology. I'm not about to assert that washing is bad for anyone, and cosmetic companies make much of the creation of "imbalances" which only their products can put right. However, it is possible to wash so much that your sebaceous glands begin to over-compensate for the lack of moisture in your skin. What's more, many of the skin conditions association with a poor immune system - eczema, acne, fungal infections - are aggravated by vigorous washing and cosmetic products. So people who wash very often are more likely to experience itching than those who wash more rarely. I don't use soap at all, and whilst my skin is pretty crap, it is better than it used to be.

All this having said, I do want to be clean. I don't mind not washing every day. But I don't know, twice a week would be nice. Perhaps twice a week which didn't actually involve dedicating all the energy of two whole days to the act of simply keeping clean.

I have explored other ways of doing this. Unfortunately, it all seems to be a matter of replacing the water bit with tremendous physical vigour. You can apparently wash by rubbing yourself down with coarse salt or porridge (well, the recipe I've seen isn't described as porridge but it is dominated by the same ingredients). In parts of the world where warm water is not readily available folks use sand, dirt and even smoke to get clean. Perhaps that's the thing; every time I burn the toast I should take all my clothes off and keep the kitchen windows closed.