Answers

Well, you got them both. Well done to Dan who was first with Olbas Oil, and Someonesmrs who was first with Savlon. Intriguingly, these are both people who know me from my pre-Iota UK life. I wonder if that gave them a head start. I didn’t have either of them down as the kind of people who would snoop in other people’s bathroom cabinets, so maybe it’s coincidence, although it does also cause me to reflect on the way we come to know people. Am I more obviously an Olbas-Savlon type if you meet me in person? Or is it just easier to guess these kind of details from the picture of someone built up and fleshed out over years rather than weeks?

So glory and smug feelings to you, Dan and Someonesmrs, but I loved some of the other answers. Oatcakes, oint ment, oxo cubes and ooo marmite – very creative. Lucozade (welcome, Strickley, and I’ve enjoyed your pictures of Cumbria this morning) does indeed always make me feel better – it’s another of those childhood comfort memories. We only drank it as a very special treat when ill and in need of building up our energy (although I later discovered that my mother used to keep a bottle of it hidden away for herself for secret swigs, which was definitely not fair play). Slimfast is a good guess, Beta Mum, and boy, could they use some of it here, but that’s another story. But cod liver oil with added malt? No. I can live without that. (Do you really like the taste? Have you seen anyone about that?) As for Sudocrem, another good guess, although sadly, I am pretty much through the Sudocrem stage. I am always tempted to spell it Pseudocrem anyway, so that would have been a P.

I did promise to tell you about the Savlon alternatives here. The leading brand is called Neosporin, but, along with the others on the shelves, it isn’t an antiseptic cream, it’s an antibiotic. Call me lax, but I really don’t think my children need antibiotic treatment every time they graze, bump, cut or otherwise mutilate themselves (by scrubbing a tattoo off their cheek with a facecloth so vigorously that they remove a patch of skin an inch and a half square which takes 3 weeks to heal, for example). I don’t want to contribute to the emergence of superbugs resistant to antibiotics, and my children’s immune systems seem to do the job perfectly well without. The real issue here, though, is the Neosporin commercial. You know I hate commercials, and this one really is one of the worst. It is almost impossible to avoid (or do they just have it programmed into my personal Cox Communications box?) and irritating to the point of… doh, I can’t think. Irritating to the point of self-mutilation with a facecloth.

The commercial shows a mother telling the story of how her precious daughter once had a clean cut on her finger, a good, oo, 3 or 4mm long. She washed the cut. She didn’t do anything else. It went a tiny bit red round the edge. She went to the doctor. He suggested she try Neosporin. The cut healed up. She will always use Neosporin. She hates to see her child suffer. She thinks all parents feel this way. She is sure we will all want to use Neosporin.

Where do I start? I can’t even begin to unpeel the layers of why this annoys me – it would make for very dull reading. It’s to do with manipulation of parents by playing on their worst feelings of inadequacy; it’s to do with commercialization of health issues; it’s to do with the way some mothers tell you how hopeless they are as a mother when what they really want you to draw from the story is how good they are as mother; it’s to do with the American obsession with medicine and drugs; it’s to do with having to get to grips with yet another brand name I don’t know.

I told you I shouldn’t start. How I would like to finish, though, is by refashioning the commercial for a UK audience. It would go like this: the mother is telling the story of her daughter’s cut finger. She phones up her GP. The receptionist says “is it an emergency? otherwise the next available appointment is a week on Thursday.” She blags her way through that one (although I’d like to see her do it), and when she sees the GP, he says to her “I can tell you’re a first time mother” (this is a direct quote from a real life GP - perhaps he’d like to appear in the commercial.) She hates to see her child suffer. She thinks all parents feel this way. She goes to her local friendly pharmacist who says “och Hen, the bairn’ll come to nae harm frae tha’ wee bitty scratch” but since she is set on purchasing a product of some description, she leaves the chemist’s with a little sky-blue tube with a white lid and white writing – that marvelous stuff Savlon (and a small bottle of Olbas Oil which was by the till and on special offer).