Super?

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve noticed the pump at the petrol station that boasts ‘Super Unleaded’ and thought, what’s so super? Is it a regular unleaded by day, but by night….? Surely it’s either unleaded or not, in what possible way does ‘super’ fit into the equation? “Well it’s more unleaded, isn’t it?” If that’s the case, then where will it end? Why not create a range of products, going from Pretty Unleaded to Really Unleaded to More Than The First Two Unleaded. Surely this could continue until they finally arrived with Definitely Unleaded.

When I try to find out the actual benefits received from paying 10p more a litre, I mostly get vague answers like, “It’s nicer to your car…treats it better…cleaner.” I suppose it’s the motor equivalent of toilet paper. All the different toilet papers do exactly the same thing, but there’s a huge range in price and quality. On the upper end of the spectrum, you get ‘quilted’ sheets, presumably to make your bum feel like it’s going to bed. Indeed, the experience of wiping your arse can become so luxurious that you’ll be taking four shits a day just to feel like your anus is being kissed by money. And of course if you’ve got cash to burn, and want to truly feel decadent in your post-defecation process, why not just use a satin handkerchief or pashmina scarf. Perhaps you are driven by a need to express a socio-political statement, so use a gold bar or some traveller’s cheques.

As students, our house tends to opt for the cheapest excuse for bog-roll available. It’s not usually pretty; I once had to resort to using the label from a baked bean can. I speak from experience when I say don’t use anything laminated. For the smallest amount of money, the range tends to offer something that is either atom thin or sand paper. When going for the former category, you need to buy in vast quantities, as you’ll be using a roll at a time to avoid staining your hand.

It’s always good to be green, but I draw the line at recycled toilet paper. First of all, I’m naturally suspicious of processes I don’t understand, and the act of transforming a desk chair into Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is as mysterious as alchemy. I’d feel more at ease if they just called it ‘Magic’ and that we had normal bins and Magic bins. I’m uncertain as to what extent recycling can be used. Can you turn a teddy bear into a machine gun? I want to know what this toilet paper was before. Perhaps it was a children’s pushbike, the wing of an aeroplane, or a carrot.

What worries me most of all, is that things are recycled from the same ‘family’. So recycled toilet paper, was toilet paper once before. How many generations of sphincters had these humble sheets hugged? And how quickly does the recycling process take? Does the sewage system filter straight into a recycling plant, that works overnight to have those same sheets dry-cleaned for next day delivery, so the very same sheets could be getting familiar with you once again come Tuesday?

On the first way round, how soon do you think they know what trees will be used for what? They probably label them: Timber, firewood, Ikea, Harry Potter, toilet paper. It must be incredibly humiliating for these trees, with all their friends going to Sweden to live the good life, whilst knowing that their only purpose is to be stained by human refuse and rot in a septic tank. I wonder if they bow their trunks in shame, unable to ever look another tree in the bark again. :(