First of all, I'm a great fan of Lush solid bar deodorants and have been using the various brands for about seven years now. These deodorants look like slabs of posh, handmade soap and are available in a range of mostly neutral / earthy browns, tans and beige. You buy them by weight (the prices fluctuate but generally you expect to pay £4 to £5 for one 'portion') and rub them in your armpits in the morning instead of using a roll-on or spray deodorant. They leave a reassuring smear of residue (I say 'reassuring' as you know you've put them on afterwards) but it's not sticky or unpleasant-feeling. And they do work quite well as deodorants - in that they prevent the smell of your armpit sweat getting really nasty during the day.

Despite being on the pricey side for deodorizing products, each £5 bar of Lush solid deodorant does last quite a long time - I haven't exactly timed it, but I'd guess at LEAST six weeks with daily use, and probably a bit more. In fact I like this type of product so much that if I'm not able to get to a 'Lush' shop, I sometimes buy them by post - and as the set-rate P&P costs almost as much a bar of deodorant will, that's really saying something...

Having written all this in favour of the Lush solid deodorant bars, I must say I had an unfortunate experience with this particular Patchouli-scented one. For anyone who doesn't know what Patchouli smells like, go to your nearest shop that sells any amount of tie-dyed clothing and have a sniff through the products on sale at the incense counter. Patchouli smells like a super-sweet, penetrating flowery / fruity / sour-sweet odour - incredibly distinctive - and it's the main fragrance you can smell with this particular Lush bar. I used this product, again, for several years, but somehow my sense of smell - which I think is usually super-acute - must've somehow become deadened to the aroma of this stuff through long-term use.

My unfortunate and embarrassing experience with Patchouli deodorant is this. About two years ago for work reasons, we weren't going to be living in our house for about eight months, and as there was some serious structural work that needed be done on the place, this seemed like a good opportunity to have the repairs carried out.

The building work spiralled out of control, as remodelling works always do, and suffice to say that the entire inside of our of house ended up being ripped out till literally nothing was left but the four walls, the roof (which eventually needed to be taken out and put back too) and a lingering odour of Lush Aromacreme Deodorant Bar Patchouli that you could've cut with a knife. It must've got into the old carpeting, and I was horrified to think that for over two years I'd gone about my business, meeting work colleagues, friends and family, always reeking of that. It was not a happy thought and I changed deodorant 'flavours' immediately.

At last the building work was complete and we returned to effectively an entirely new house - on the inside: it had new floors and flooring, stairs, windows, doors, plaster-work - everything. But somehow the stench of Lush Patchouli still permeated the building. In the enclosed space the shut-in smell took on a terrible stale-ness - that you can still faintly get a whiff of, if, say, the house has been unoccupied for a few days when we've been on a visit away. I don't think it'll ever fully go, not really.

It's a sobering thought, isn't it?