On the run up towards Christmas in my childhood years, say up to the age of about 12, we would collect and hoard the glass jars from which the last bits of peanut butter, lemon curd spread and boiled sweets had been scraped, licked, rinsed and chiselled out.
These would be put aside in readiness for a session of gift making for our Grandparents.
The larger and more ornate the jar the better as they would soon be carefully filled, spoonful by spoonful with bright, crystal clear and perfumed bath salts.
I seem to remember that they were purchased in bulk from Boots The Chemist or a local discount shop, perhaps even the old Woolworth Store.
In quantity and quality they made the perfect pocket money budget present.
After a bit of decoration around the jars you would be hard pressed to find anything more lovingly crafted and personalised.
What's more they seemed to be really appreciated by the recipients as it appears that to those of our Grandparents' generation they represented a bit of decadence, luxury and frivolity against a backdrop of the austere eras through which they had themselves grown up, between the two World Wars and in the prolonged years of rationing that followed in peacetime well into the decade in which me and my siblings were born.
The strong smell, fine dusty residues and even a few saved for our own bath times have formed a very enduring memory.
Well, my carefully archived memories have now been sullied somewhat by the modern drug culture reference to bath salts meaning something completely different and as far away from cute and sweet as you could possibly get.
The term is now used for a specific group of recreational designer drugs creating a psychoactive reaction in their users.
There have been some instances when the proper and old fashioned bath salts as found in my own childhood were used to disguise their more potent and destructive namesakes.
Here is the science bit.
Synthetic cathinones such as mephedrone, which are chemically similar to cathinone, naturally found in the plant Catha edulis (khat), were first synthesised in the 1920s. They remained obscure until the first decade of the 21st century, when underground chemists rediscovered them and began to use them in designer drugs, as the compounds were legal in many jurisdictions.
In 2009 and 2010 there was a significant rise in the abuse of synthetic cathinones, initially in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, and subsequently in the United States.
Drugs marketed as "bath salts" first came to the attention of authorities in the US in 2010 after reports were made to US poison centres In Europe, the drugs were predominantly purchased from websites, but in the US they were mainly sold in small independent stores such as gas stations and head shops.
In the US, this often made them easier to obtain than cigarettes and alcohol.Bath salts have also been sold online in small packets.Hundreds of other designer drugs or "legal highs" have been reported, including artificial chemicals such as synthetic cannabis and semi-synthetic substances such as methylhexaneamine.
These drugs are primarily developed to avoid being controlled by laws against illegal drugs, thus giving them the label of designer drugs.In the US, the number of calls to poison centres concerning "bath salts" rose from 304 in 2010 to 6,138 in 2011, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
Calls related to bath salts then began to decrease; by 2015, the number had declined to 522.
Is nothing sacred?
Is it not a precious thing to conserve the recollections of an innocent childhood?
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