Of people and perspectives.

A friend of mine is sick. Very sick. Six weeks in hospital and still going, with no clear end in sight. After hospital comes rehabilitation. Never one to be exuding with patience, she recovers at a pace far too slow for her liking. Whilst it may not be noticeable to her, the improvement in her condition is substantial - even if she still has some way to go until she is healthy and can return home.

My friend's husband - equally as much a friend - is holding it all together, but is clearly very stressed. Understandably. Working long hours on top of everything else is not making matters any easier for him. His wife's illness consumes his being, and the current pressure of his employer's deadlines do not help.

On Saturday night, his brother-in-law died unexpectedly. Having only just been diagnosed with a very serious illness that would potentially have killed him within a couple of weeks, he instead died of a heart-related condition. Her mother has just been diagnosed with cancer. A type that has a very high chance of being treated successfully, but cancer nonetheless. My friend has understandably not taken the news of her mother's illness well. My other friend continues to soldier on, as he needs to for his unwell spouse (if not for himself - which he most clearly does need to as well).

Another person that I know, who is also friends with my friends, is going through the last stages of what ought to have been, by all accounts, a straightforward divorce from her partner. However, now that the end of what became more a complicated than expected separation (aren't they all!) is approaching, she appears to have gone back on previous agreements between her and her ex-partner and is making the last stages unnecessarily difficult - and expensive (another inevitability once lawyers become involved).

Is not interesting to see how people deal with the issues in their own lives and gain a perspective of their own issues by considering what others face?

Crass: Do They Owe Us a Living?

Fuck the politically minded

Here's something I want to say

About the state of the nation

The way it treats us today

At school they give you shit

Drop you in the pit

You try and try and try to get out

But you can't

Because they fucked you about

then you're a prime example

Of how they must not be

This is just a sample

Of what they done

To you and me

Chorus: Do they owe us a living?

Of course they do

Of course they do

Do they owe us a living?

Of course they do

Of course they do

Do they owe us a living?

Of course they fucking do!

They don't want me anymore

Cos I threw it on the floor

They used to call me sweet thing

But I'm nobody's plaything

And now that I am different

They'd love to bust my head

They'd love to see me cop-out

They'd love to see me dead

Chorus

The living that is owed to me

I'm never doing to get

They've buggered this old world up

Up to their necks in debt

They'd give you a lobotomy

For something you ain't done

They'll made you an epitome

Of everything that's wrong

Chorus

Don't take any notice

Of what the public think

They're so hyped up with T.V.

They just don't want to think

They'll use you as a target

For demands and for advice

When you don't want to hear it

They'll say you're full of vice

Chorus

The palm oil-free odyssey continues.

It's now been a few weeks since the palm oil-free lifestyle change kicked in fully. I'm still alive, my hair hasn't fallen out or my face dissolved from the switch to bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice for washing, and I have yet to offend any restaurant owners.

I have, however, discovered that I am allergic to the first type of palm oil-free soap that I tested. I initially wondered (but not enough to arrange an appointment with my local friendly health practitioner) what horrendous flesh-eating bacterium (albeit slow eating) or skin-inflaming virus I had been inflicted with, thanks to the non-stop itching that I had been suffering from for a good ten days.

A fortuitous decision to test the Palestinian olive oil soap I had purchased demonstrated the medicinal strengths of West Bank cleaning products, as both the bacterial infection and viral plague were swiftly eliminated. Or perhaps simply didn't contain the ingredient to which I am apparently allergic.

Either way, issue solved. Itching gone, a product to wash with discovered and palm oil banished from one part of my life.

To date I have had two opportunities to question waiting staff about the oil source of meals that I have eaten. The first, a very average vegetarian risotto, listed olive oil in the name of the dish. In retrospect, I should have suggested that they buy a better olive oil and learn how to cook risotto.

The second occasion involved a vegetarian Thai green curry and may well have contained some sort of oil but it didn't occur to me to ask at the time. Not least because my friend and I were struggling to make ourselves understood by the hapless woman employed by the restaurant, ostensibly to serve customers. At least it tasted pretty good. Not a sterling example of investigating what one eats though, is it?

That's alright by... anybody?

In what has been an intriguing week for the music world, Roger Jouret, better known as Plastic Bertrand, strenuously denied the allegations levelled against him in a Belgian court battle, then a day later admitted to them. The allegations? That his is not the voice on the first four albums released under his pseudonym's name, but rather record producer Lou Deprijck is the singer.

Will the original Milli Vanilli please jump about and mime?

This may come as a shock to some, but I recall reading rumours about PB's lack of vocal involvement with the song years ago. And don't forget - as a member of Hubble Bubble, Jouret's first band, he was the drummer, not the singer.

And, of course, "Ca Plane Pour Moi" (translated in various ways, but "That's alright by me" is the one that appeals to me - other perhaps than for PB's one-time assertion on the John Peel Show that it actually meant "I like it when I'm high"), is not even the original song.

The real thing: Elton Motello's "Jet Boy Jet Girl" - I'm gonna make you penetrate...

No, that honour belongs to Elton Motello. Rather than being bitter about the relative obscurity of the band's version, Alan Ward (who also used the "Elton Motello" moniker for himself, as well as the band), famously said,

We have all been ripped off at some point in our lives, but judging by the emails I receive, my lyric has touched many more people and seems to ring a chord in many more hearts than the French one will ever do. That's why I wrote it. If I was meant to be rich it would have happened. But I am rich in the knowledge that my thoughts will never disappear.

I wonder how Roger Jouret feels now, safe in the knowledge that the world knows of the 33-year deception surrounding his claim to fame.

Palm oil-free soap: the journey continues.

Since discovering that the purchase of palm oil-free soap is not as simple as it ought to be, I've widened my search.

First stop: the Central Market, home to a few health shops. Result: not a bar of palm oil-free soap in sight. One store did, however, did make a photocopy of my Borneo Orangutan Survival shopping list, so that it could investigate potential suppliers.

Searching online did reveal one local producer that does not use palm oil in any of his soaps. Alex's Handcrafted Soaps proudly states that

out of respect for the endangered Orang-utan and their habitat I do not use palm oil in any of my products

Ecolateral is the closest supplier. Upon arrival I was dismayed to see that the majority of other soap products in the shop contained palm oil, but Alex's Handcrafted Soaps were also available. Having expressed my concern at the presence of palm oil soap (and pointing out why sustainable palm oil is anything but sustainable), I made my purchase of a couple of bars to try.

As it turned out, a second option turned up unexpectedly: at my local Oxfam shop I spotted a palm oil-free soap whilst purchasing some Fair Trade palm oil-free chocolate - Sindyanna Olive Oil Soap, produced in Israel and the West Bank by Arab farmers. Excited as I was by this discovery, trying to explain to the friendly woman behind the counter that there was an additional benefit beyond fair trade ended up being a frustrating (and ultimately futile) exercise. As much as I tried to explain, she appeared to be incapable of appreciating that there could be a second benefit. Oh well.

So far, so good with Alex's soap. It lathers and washes well, but the first variety is a little soft, meaning that it is disappearing at a far faster rate than I would like it to. Tomorrow will be the first test for the Palestinian olive oil soap.

Baking soda and baking powder are not the same.

Today's lesson, following on from yesterday's discovery, is that baking soda and baking powder are not the same. Whilst the latter may contain the former, it also contains other ingredients.

At least the baking powder hasn't dissolved my face off or made my hair fall out, but I may need to get some baking soda.

Palm oil-free personal hygiene: alternatives.

As I blogged a few days ago, finding personal hygiene products that are free of palm oil is not always an easy task. Indeed, after spending maybe twenty minutes reading the labels of every single line, I failed to do so at my local supermarket.

In searching for alternatives that are available locally, I stumbled upon a solution that had not occurred to me: DIY. Nothing like a little improvisation to rid oneself of palm oil.

Shampoo: Hardly a significant issue for somebody with hair of my length, but nonetheless an experiment to try. A quick searched revealed that others have also considered going down the shampoo-free path before I did (not really a surprise). Having a lemon tree makes the lemon juice idea appealing, and having baking soda in the cupboard is also convenient.

Soap: More difficult to improvise. Again, a quick search revealed palm oil-free soap recipes, but these require ingredients, time and facilities that I do not have to hand at the moment. Whilst making my own soap will be a longer term aim, it isn't an option now.