Running on empty

No, not another post on the knackering nature of lambing. In fact my head is desperate for thoughts that are entirely unrelated to sheep. Having done the 5am shift, I finally got back to the house for a ten o'clock shower and contemplated the shampoo and shower gel bottles, as you do.
They were getting close to being empty. They frequently are. How I manage to get through so much of the stuff, I don't know.
As a child I remember wondering about the never empty shampoo bottle (no shower gel in those days, we were a strictly Camay family). The bottle was enormous (but then, I was a lot smaller) and full of thick amber liquid. I'd sit by the bath and play with the bottle, tilting it this way and that, as the soapy treacly stuff inside slid up and down. It had vertical ridges and I could run my fingernails round it to make a grating sound, using the bottle as a Guiro. But like the amazing porridge pot that gave and gave, the same bottle, with the same shampoo, just kept on giving. I never dealt with the dregs of the shampoo or found an unfamiliar bottle sitting on the corner of the bath.
Knowing my Mother's war-time habits I now realise that she must have bought many great tubs of the stuff and simply refilled the bottle when I wasn't around. The label was curled in the same place, even when the level of shampoo had gone up. It took me decades though, to get used to the fact that shampoo bottles were not bottomless, that shower gel did get used up, that toiletries had to be bought, not just once, but again and again.
Sometimes I'd rather not have the gauzy veil of childhood lifted - the reality of having to put such stuff on the shopping list has no charm whatsoever. And being greedy, I always did love the tale of the little porridge pot.