granny’s favourite gift

BATH CUBES, launched 1930s, no longer widely available

A PRESSED cube of perfumed Epsom salts, wrapped in foil paper and adorned with a paper band featuring an illustration of the Swiss Alps, Kew Garden hydrangeas, or the lawn at York Minster, boxed in batches of nine and sold in the kind of gift shops where you find Dundee marmalade and scone recipe tea towels, there was something mysterious about the bath cube.

The idea was that each cube would be unsheathed from its souvenir packaging, then plopped into a running bath to dissolve, scent and soften the water, turning mundane bath times into something thrilling and posh.

Except the peculiar thing was that no one seemed to buy them. They just sort of appeared in people’s homes, via the endlessly recycled spare-present drawers of Britain’s grandmothers, like some black market operated by the silver-haired mafia.

Whenever someone unexpected dropped by over Christmas, my own beloved grandmother, Nance, would nip upstairs and grab some dusty bath cubes from the under-bed archive, which I imagined were then stored in the recipient’s smellies drawer to be similarly recycled next year.

And so on, until the Christmas my grandmother would get them back, boxes bruised but still emitting potent lily of the valley. Then I might get to have one fizzing half-heartedly around my Sunday-night bath, turning to gritty sludge on my leg, filling the tiny bathroom with the smell of stewed petals.

There was nothing more decadent — and no greater treat. Their shelf life is almost infinite and their vintage packaging now more beautiful than ever.