Bye Bye Body Shop
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Daniel Barenboim-
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
Here is a copy of a letter I am sending to The Body Shop with the pieces of my "Love Your Body" customer card:

April 16 2006

Mrs. Elisabeth Allin
31 Dorchester Court
Oriental Road
Woking, Surrey
GU22 7DN

To Whom It May Concern:

I have been a customer of the Body Shop for eleven years. I have always relied on the Body Shop as a trustworthy alternative to other cosmetic companies for many reasons. I was first attracted to The Body Shop because of its position on animal testing and recycling/refilling of the plastic bottles. In addition the products seemed more natural and reliable than other leading brands.

Through the years I’ve heard rumours that the Body Shop, while not testing its products on animals directly, doesn’t actually exclude ingredients that have been tested on animals. Yet, due to the quality of the products as well as the fair-deal campaign, I believed I was purchasing a more ethical product.

I also enjoyed using your products. Please check my “Love Your Body” customer number 600403622. I happily used up the 8 purchases on my first card and enjoyed the resulting free gift. I have now used my second card twice. But as you can see from the enclosed contents, I will never be using it again.

What’s the straw that broke the camel’s back? The Body Shop selling out to L’Oreal.

I believe people like me are getting very tired of multinational corporations dominating the market, and blurring the lines between their own competing brands. I now find myself going further and further underground for my cosmetics, clothes, food and holidays as a result.

Just to give you an idea of what kind of customer you are losing, here is a current inventory of The Body Shop products in my bathroom that I will happily use up and never repurchase:

1. All in One Face Base 03 *
2. Almond Oil Conditioning Hand Wash
3. Aloe Vera Daily Moisturizing Lotion SPF 15 *
4. Brazil Nut Moisture Mask
5. Camomile Gentle Eyemake-up remover
6. Enhancer (silver) from the Colourings range
7. Hemp Body Butter
8. Lemongrass deodorizing foot polish
9. Lip Butter *
10. Lip Palette
11. Warming Mineral Mask
12. Lip Scuff
13. Corrective Prebase 04 White
14. Mascara VO2 *
15. Eye Definer 05
16. Blush
17. Eyeliner-Bright Blue (Liquid)
18. Corrective Prebase 02-Green
19. Eye shadow
20. Eyeliner smudger (tool)
21. Foundation Brush
22. Mini hair brush
23. Decorative bobby pins
24. Perfume Oil-vanilla *
25. Tea Tree Oil (10ml) *
26. Home Fragrance Oil (Tropical Crush)
27. Shea Body Butter *
28. Mango Body Butter *
29. Foot exfoliator pad
30. Body Brush

*Indicates a repeat/regular purchase

In addition I have purchased from time to time products from your For Men range, as well as your gift packages.

My suggestion and purpose of writing this letter is to suggest some changes you could make to win customers back:

1. Offer a fair-trade, organic range that is toxin free.
2. If you must stick with L’Oreal, then I suggest that you are seen to be putting pressure on their purchasing and manufacturing habits.
3. Offer a recycle/refill point at ALL your stores for your product containers.
4. Embark on high-profile fair-trade and environmental conservation campaigns.
5. Consider introducing a do-it-yourself range where customers are invited to purchase the raw-materials to make their own ethical cosmetics, and perhaps offer workshops in select branches.

Until something changes, I will actively campaign against The Body Shop.

Thank you for your time, I hope I haven’t wasted it.

Sincerely,


Elisabeth Allin

<<<

I've also done a Toxic Inventory of all the cosmetics in the house, and it's not a very pretty picture. But perhaps more on that another time.

Happy Easter!

Spring Low, Sweet Haricot
Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: Norman Kember on BBC4
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries

Norman Kember, the English ex-hostage is speaking on BBC4 of his whole "ordeal" in Iraq, and frankly, he sounds like a misguided but disturbingly well-intentioned fellow. The way he's speaking sounds as if he's describing a holiday, as if it was no big deal. He agrees he was probably naive, but this was just what he had to do. And when asked about difficult parts of his peace mission, like say the kidnapping, or Tom Fox's last words, he simply says "Oh, I can't remember." "My mind must have just shut off" and then laughs. There is definitely something odd about him, and slightly irresponsible.

I'm expressing the above opinion only because it's an about-face from my opinion only a week or two ago. There was a lot of criticism in the papers after his release and I recall hotly defending his actions to Stephen (who agreed with me). I thought it was important for civilians and peacemakers to try and repair damage where perhaps the military and governments were too overstretched to handle.

I thought, who cares about the cost?, its good that people have such strong convictions, and are brave enough to put themselves in danger to help others.

Only now, Norman Kember truly sounds like a selfish Christian who was not interested in helping anyone, but rather was interested in talking to them, and showing Iraqi's the strength of his faith and to demonstrate that not all Christians hate them. Even better, how would you like to be a Christian yourself? Imagine how content that would have made Mr. Kember feel? To have risked his life, having proven indisputably the strength of his convictions, and then to have a trophy to bring back: "Look, I lead x amount of people to the Lord!" Hallelujah.

Meanwhile, what the Iraqi people need least is more religion. They require less division and confusion. What I wish Norman Kember had said he went to Iraq to do was to help Iraqis, perhaps rebuild their communities (bring a nice injection of western cash, instead of western religion). He could have used his interaction with the Iraqi public to help steer the government in the right direction. A well-intentioned peace activist is not inspiring. A peace activist who actually creates peace is something awe-inspiring.

Instead, he's achieved nothing and yet would do it again (without getting kidnapped of course).

>>>>RANT OVER<<<<

Stephen's making yummy potatoes and we'll probably end up in the pub somewhere today. I'll drink to world peace, I assure you.

Mmmmmm....
Topic: Stephen Says
The Vice guide to the English breakfast.

PS-
Topic: Stephen Says
Jeeze, is this really as exciting as it gets around here?!?! Elisabeth's in bed by ten and I'm puttering around until i'm tired enough to join her. I'm looking forward to her justification (read: excuse) for it.

I gave cocaine tea a try today. Dried cocoa leaves in a tea bag direct from South America. Either it took a really ,really, really long time to kick in or it was the 2 coffees that I had after it that finally kick-started my day. Either way, if you're going to pay 50p for drugs, I don't think that you should expect too much to come from it...

Meanwhilem, it's Good Friday tomorrow. Why don't y'all tell me what's so damn good about it???

duh duh do dah do
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins
Topic: Stephen Says
E's in the kitchen making cookies & trying to perfect a cookie recipe. We've been making our way steadily through all the wine my dad sent us for my birthday. The South African is, by the way, really standing out against the French wines, I must say.

Spring is in the air & the weather's getting warmer and it's nice to be able to be outside amongst the daffodils and just relax - work-wise, it makes life alot nicer. Apartment-wise it means nice, fresh air wafting through the room.

Things are pretty relaxed, all said. E's off for 4 days and I've got the weekend off, myself so... could a spring clean be on the menu? Probably not. Nonetheless, things have been much less hectic than they have been and that suits me just fine.

I'm looking forward to when all the beer gardens open up.

A few bullet points
Topic: Stephen Says
Some stuff:

-Don't Look Now was really good. Weird but good and E&I are still trying to figure out what on Earth was going on in it.

-Our tickets to North Carolina are booked - we arrive on June 28th and leave July 6th - and E&I are looking to, on the beachhouse week, go to Charlottesville for a day (it's only 4 hours drive, after all) estberg siblings, are you interested?

-And finally, THIS VIDEO (There's also a transcript) was almost too embarassing to watch. Almost.

Blub blub blub
Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: Husker Du - Warehouse songs & stories
Topic: Stephen Says
So I get a day off at last and get a chance to reflect on the last week... I still hate birthdays, I don't care what you say. That said, I'm happy and relatively stress-free yet exhausted and stressed-out.
Go figure.

Last night we at long last got to watch The Wicker Man again (As I attempted to prophesize earlier this week) and have a free copy (2 free copies, in fact! Let me know if you want one!!!) of Don't Look Now, featuing Donald Sutherlad & Julie Christie. I fell asleep watching it during a sleep in but I'm relying on Tim's awesome advice that it's fantastic. Looking forward to watching it soon!
(i.e., tomorrow - my only dat off in a while.)

Bleah.
Nothing much else.
It's weird how management suddenly makes you care about your job and, when your job is people, you have to care more.
Yet keep the professional boundries...
Which is cool but, at the same time frustrating because you've got to manage collegues who don't do what you want to care them to do.
Which doesn't make much sense.
Which means I'm rambling.
Which means that this blog entry has come to an end.

Surrey with a Fringe on Top
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: exactly
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
EDIT: E's probably gonna kill me but I took some pictures off... I think those involved would't want said pictures to be up on the net. Sorry, hon!
*****

Ok, so I've been challenged to explain Stephen's Birthday (non)planning:

It all started when I didn't know what to get/do for Stephen. His crazy schedule soon ruled out planning a weekend away, or even taking the day off to spend together since Stephen was schedule to work the afternoon/evening shift on his birthday. So right, I must get a really nice present for him. However, I've found that after almost three years of marriage, the "special" and "romantic" and "thoughtful" are not in material presents. (Or I wasn't imaginative enough to think of something). I did give London a try however, but if you read back a few entrys, London disappointed me in several ways that day, so I came back empty handed for Stephen.

With the birthday only a few days away, I did the only thing a sensible person could do: surf the net. I found a party site that offered some wacky things, and had a delivery slot open for Stephen's birthday. But before I went ahead, I wanted to check with Stephen's co-workers that I wasn't going to duplicate any party things they were going to do.

It turns out they were happy to have the party stuff sent over, and I joked around that I'd get Stephen's old Manager to dress up in balloons and be a singing telegram. I was given his old manager's mobile number, and made the necessary arrangements. Through all of this, I thought I had communicated that I would send over some party stuff, and maybe show up after I finished work with some cakes, and bring Stephen's manager with me.

So the night before Stephen's birthday we went out for a few drinks and dinner to celebrate. I told Stephen I hadn't got him any presents (partly true) and was he disappointed? The answer was both yes and no. So I set his sights low hoping to surprise him the next day.

The morning of his birthday I had arranged to go into work late so that I could treat Stephen to a nice breakfast etc... but he was not feeling well for all the pizza and deep-fried cheese he'd eaten the night before (the pints of beer, 1/2 bottle of wine and naughty coffee surely didn't contribute) and so he wasn't hungry. Luckily, I had some marzipan men on hand to whet his appetite:

Not feeling well, and having no presents, Stephen felt like calling in sick to work (NO!). But he went in the end of course.

Stephen's boss picked me up (early) from work where we then gathered supplies (cake, balloons, ribbon, pizza) and made our way to the project.

It was a windy day, but the balloons held (bar one).

SURPRISE!

"It's daddy's birthday, oh yes it is, and it is today"

And then pop!

>BANNED!<

It was at this point that the misunderstandings surfaced: they hadn't opened the party things yet and they were all waiting for me and Stephen's old boss to arrive, and had been stalling for hours causing lots of confusion (um, I thought it was obvious that I had to work a 9-5 job and would arrive with desert, but hey, it's 3 o'clock where are they?)

So we opened up the boxes and found Mr. Wayne, hit the pinata, ate cake, sang songs, and the whole jing-bang gang just chilled out...

>BANNED!<


...until the food fight that is.

And how could I forget the lap dance?

>BANNED!<

Thanks to Susan's trip to cuba, I had a cuban cigar in my bag to offer to Stephen on his walk home. And thanks to his co-workers, they not only bought him a very nice bottle of whiskey, but had a flask engraved with "Just give 'r" (FUBAR reference).

The confusion escalated when Stephen spoke to his mother later that evening "Well Elisabeth didn't really get me anything, but my co-workers threw me a nice party". What?! I couldn't believe it. He thought his co-workers loved him more than me, and that was an unpleasant feeling.

Now I hope things are sorted and we can resume our life as a THIRTY year old and a (ha ha) TWENTY FOUR year old couple.

Stephen's working (of course) this weekend, and so I must off to market to buy some non-supermarket produce and local eggs.

I must confess that I ate 1/2 pint of Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream last night. But I'm telling you this because I was shocked to read the ingredients list and discover all sorts of things are going into the ice cream. I was always under the impression that B & J's ice cream only had the purest and fewest ingregdients. What's going on? Never again I tell you. I dumped the rest down the drain this morning (well, it had melted).

SIDE NOTE: Happy 53rd Birthday to Stephen's father!
*******
EDIT: Stephen here again. Dad: I'm not sure if E's being funny or not but I know your real age and don't worry; I won't post it here!

I'm 30
Mood:  mischievious
Now Playing: Of Montreal - Satanic Panic in the Attic
Topic: Stephen Says
Well, there was some confusion today with my birthday celebrations and I'll let E try to explain it tomorrow while I'm doing the sleep-in. Suffice to say that I was suitably gob-smacked this afternoon and will have to explain what the hell was going on to my co-workers & residents tomorrow.

Here are pictures:
The Man eats marzipan in the morning:

He receives his pinata; John wayne stands in the background:

The anatomically correct birthday cake:

The Man is 30:

Anyway, a strange day that I still don't fully understand (I think). Apologies to those involved in it - I'll explain it to you as soon as I know what was going on. Also - If I talked to you and it seemed like it was a quiet afternoon well, that was before it stopped being quiet.

Kudos to poor planning and a little spontanaity.

There's nothing like walking home in a sailors hat, smoking a Cuban cigar & drinking 12 year single malt rare Scotch whisky from a flask.
Yum.

30 - 1 day
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Of Montreal - Satanic Panic in the Attic
Topic: Stephen Says
Just got back from our favorite Italian joint for a lush dinner (PS - the head waiter says 'Hello to mom.') where I've eaten so much that I feel like throwing up. Yum yum it's the birthday meal.

So on my birthday, I'm working 'till 9:30pm, the day afterwards, a 13 hour shift plus sleep in and then throughout the weekend. At least I've had the last three days 'off.'

By 'off,' I mean that I've been taking a smoking cessation course through the NHS - I'm now qualified to assist in quit smoking courses (group & 1 on 1) for both members of John Q. Public & those with mental health needs. It also means that I can freelance a bit (at 30 quid a pop!) should the opportunity come up. Ah well, it's good for the CV. With luck, in a year or so, I'll be able to qualify for a higher certification, which is kind of cool.

Otherwise, nothing much else. I'm aware this blog is kind of boring now but that's good. We're down to about 200-300 hits a day which is still way too high to make sense but it's better than the 800+ hits we were getting a while ago.
Weird.
Are we that interestiong?
I hope to God not... That would be wayyy too disturbing.

Anyway, I'm tired & theres a touch of wine around and I'm going to see if we can watch the Wicker Man tonight.
If only to see Britt Ekland do her ass-slapping naked dance...

"It's Stephen's birthday, Oh yes it is and it is today..."
-Festen... Sort of.