The VGs
Anthea van Gindertael is an English-language teacher
who runs her own language school. Her husband Marc, is an IT
engineer. They have lived as expats near Geneva, Switzerland,
for the last 15 years. Daughter Alix, a beautician, lives at
home.
Anthea and Marc do the family shop together each weekend.
Anthea: We always buy white toilet rolls, no colours, no scents – and
the cheapest, the supermarket brand, Champion No 1. I think it
is naff to have coloured loo rolls and they presumably have colourants
in them too. White probably has bleach in it which could be a
problem but we buy it anyway. We don’t buy white for environmental
reasons really; I am very bad on that score. It just doesn’t
seem necessary. I always buy Kleenex pocket tissues with balsam;
they are soft and have a nice smell.
Marc: I always choose white first of all and I might look at
the price a bit but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time thinking
about it. Bon à Savoir (a Swiss consumer advice magazine)
has a study on pocket tissues this month – softness, wetness,
toughness – and I think Tempo came out best. I use cotton
handkerchiefs anyway and don’t know much about brands. I’ve
heard of Kleenex and Tempo but I wouldn’t necessarily buy
them over supermarket brands.
Anthea: We don’t use a lot of kitchen towel; I think it
is quite wasteful and I prefer to use a cloth where possible.
Occasionally we use them as napkins and for cleaning windows.
We used to use wet ones for the kids when they were small but
we don’t buy them now. Again, they are wasteful. I do buy
small square boxes of tissues with flowers on for the office though
because they look nice.
Alix has another point of view. At work, at a luxury spa beauty
parlour near Geneva, Alix uses plain white tissues for patting
dry her clients’ faces. Her boss chooses these and buys
Lotus brand. But for herself? I love soft tissues - and flowers
and things like the Andrex puppy are great. Charmin paper has
a bear on it, and if you buy it in England you can get the bear
free. There has to be good advertising for it – I love the
dancing bear.
You can get sudoku loo paper now too – I’d buy that
for a friend as a present. I like pocket tissues that are really
small – to fit properly in your pocket . Not the taller
ones. Here in Switzerland I always buy Kleenex and always with
animals or flowers on it. Papa always buys those packets of tissues
that are really cheap. But they hurt! I like soft ones.
The Butts
Paul and Irene Butt until recently owned a pub/restaurant/hotel
in Devon, England. Today they share their time
between England and their holiday home in France. Paul, an engineer,
Irene, a teacher, have spent a large part of their working lives
in South Africa.
TW: You have bright red toilet rolls in your guest bathroom.
Paul: Yes. I saw a shelf in the supermarket here
in France with startling colours – red, black, and a sort
of putrid green...
Irene: Lime green.
Paul: Lime green – and I thought they would brighten up
our nondescript bathroom. You don’t normally see them and
I thought they would look nice.
Irene: They’re quite expensive, but he was being radical.
Generally we only buy white – toilet rolls, tissues, kitchen
paper. The red ones are excellent quality though; we wouldn’t
have bought them otherwise.
Paul: I’ve no idea who made
it but it’s the best quality toilet roll we’ve ever
bought in France.
Irene: Usually we would only ever buy white. We don’t
buy the cheapest because it obviously wouldn’t be as good
quality. We only buy brands – we usually buy Lotus, I think,
in France. In England we buy Andrex toilet rolls, white, and aloe
vera; you can’t beat aloe vera and Andrex is definitely
the best.
The rolls are bigger and the squares too, in England. For the
pub, too, we used to buy Andrex. For nose tissues we buy Kleenex
and if I have a cold I buy aloe vera Kleenex . You can’t
find these in France. In fact there’s nothing as good as
in England and you get much more choice there.
Paul: When you have a cold you need man-sized tissues. Kleenex.
In France you can’t find anything like that; you have to
use kitchen towel.
Irene: In kitchen towel I buy Bounty because of the ad. It’s
the only ad that I’ve ever been taken in by. It was an ad
showing a comparison, showing it as more absorbent and better
quality. I was in the supermarket one day with my son and I remembered
the ad and said I was going to buy it, and I have ever since.
It wasn’t even a funny advert!.
TW: Will you buy coloured toilet rolls again?
Paul: Yes I’d buy them again. Maybe black next time, but
not lime green. But only because the quality is there too. I wouldn’t
have bought them in the first place otherwise.
Irene: With paper napkins we definitely do colours and they
have to co-ordinate. Not flowers, just plain colours
or stripes. I love the lineneffect ones, Delsey
I think. I can’t
find them very often but I would buy them all the
time if I could. We even used to buy them for the pub. They are
printed on both sides, not like the paper ones
that you find in France that are plain on the underside. I don’t
like that; I always feel cheated. TW
