It's not often that I know exactly what I was doing ten years previously, to the precise hour - but the present hour represents one such rare occasion.

On Monday, 31st of July 1995, shortly after 5pm, I left the offices of the Japanese Bank whose trading systems I managed, and walked the short distance to Moorgate tube station, to board a Northern Line train to Golders Green, exactly as I did every weekday.

After arriving at Golders Green 25 minutes later, I climbed into my car in the residential road where I always parked it, around the corner from the tube station, as usual. This time however, instead of driving to the southernmost point of the M1, then north up the motorway, away from London as I had a few hundred times before, I drove to a small hotel a few streets away, to spend my very first night as a resident of London.


That morning I had commuted to the City from my house in Derby, where I had spent the weekend, 150 miles from my place of work. I had moved out of my girlfriend's place in Northampton two days earlier.

I stayed in the hotel for four nights; it was really a large semi-detached house as you can see from the photo above, taken in 2002. I had a small room at the very top, with a shared bathroom. I went to stay with my cousin in Lewisham on moving out of there, and a few weeks later, moved into a place of my own in East Dulwich, where I lived until February 2002. But that's a story for another day, probably.

Here richly, with
ridiculous display,
The politician's corpse
was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed
to see him hanged.

Hilaire Belloc

Sometime in early 2000, I developed a habit of buying bathroom products whenever I found them available in a '2 for 1' offer in the supermarkets which I frequented in South-East London. After all, such offers represented a significant saving, and it seemed to make sense to buy a sufficient quantity to last until the next special offer.

Unfortunately, for reasons which remain something of a mystery, my habit turned into an odd sort of compulsion. One afternoon in 2001, It dawned on me that I had several years' supply of shower gel, deodorant, hand soap, shaving gel, razor blades and shampoo stacked in cardboard boxes in my flat.

My heart sank when I realised what I had done, and I imposed a strict bathroom products moratorium, vowing that I would not buy so much as a single razor blade until I had used up all of my existing supplies. My mountain of toiletries began to oppress me. I've always enjoyed shopping for mens' toiletries - which is actually how my problem arose, of course - so the realisation that I would be unable to do so again for years saddened me. And, although I consoled myself with the thought that, should human civilisation collapse, I would not have to forego soap, or shave with a sharpened penknife for a very long time, the amount of storage space taken up by my unnecessary stash of bathroom goodies became a source of profound irritation.

I carefully measured my usage of these products over predetermined intervals, to gauge the rate at which I use each of them. I marked my progress on a spreadsheet, as they gradually diminished, to keep up morale. Every discarding of an empty deodorant spray in these last four years has been a minor cause for celebration, each ejection of an exhausted razor blade a little victory.

And now, the end is in sight. In the next few days, my present deodorant spray will expire, leaving me with exactly three. I now own no more than 1300ml of shower gel, and only twenty-one razor blades. I'm presently using the very last can of shaving gel. In other words, my gargantuan stock of bathroom products has dwindled to something approaching normal proportions; where once it dominated the hallway between the bathroom and the kitchen in my flat in large cardboard boxes, now it merely quietly occupies a modest area of shelf space.


Not much left - July 2005
I still have some way to go. Although I will be able to browse the supermarket shelves in search of deodorant again in less than four months, I anticipate that it will be sometime next year until I coax the last drop of shower gel from the last container, or attach the final razor blade to its stem. But I see a dim glimmer of light from that day at the end of the tunnel now, and what a joyous day it will be. Oh Lord, I believe my time ain't long.

I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released

- Bob Dylan