THING: Pumpkin Spice
Autumn is creeping up on us like Dave Grohl at an after party, and with it comes the Lucyverse Autumn Sale! Sign up before 30th September and grab an annual subscription for just £30. Just think, you’ll be laughing all winter instead of crying into your soup. Get it while you can!
Talking of autumn, it’s now the law that we must celebrate this drab, soggy season with a variety of pointless and exhausting new rituals. If you’re not making dried flower wreaths, performatively eating cinnamon buns, wearing cream-coloured knitwear and sipping lattes around the autumn tree (otherwise known as ‘a tree’) what are you even doing?
Of course, at the centre of capitalist autumn is pumpkin spice, a cloying yet unknowable scent/flavour which is pumped through ventilation systems everywhere in an attempt to make us feel nice and cosy rather than TERRIFIED OUT OF OUR WITS.
And it seems that there’s no end of things you can add it to…
PUMPKIN SPICE DOG PERFUME
When I saw this advertised as ‘Pupkin Spice’ I screamed for three minutes straight. After that, I had to get to grips with the fact that there is such a thing as perfume for dogs, made by an insufferably twee sounding company called ‘Peanut and Pickle.’ (It’s vegan, too, thank God, because all dogs are famously vegan.) You know what, I think it’s time for the Top Dog of the global pack - possibly a bulldog called Spike - to stand up and say enough is enough. How much more human bullshit must canines endure? Next they’ll be playing pool and smoking cigars!
VERDICT: Eruff is eruff
DUDE’S LOVE PUMPKIN SPICE MASSAGE OIL, AMAZON
I’m quite confused about this product, because judging by the throbbing brand name, surely it’s for gay men. But then again, what self-respecting gay man would want their partner to reek like an AirWick Plug-in that’s covering up the smell of gravy in a care home?
It turns out, though, that most of the reviews are from heterosexual women. The feedback is rather interesting, ranging from ‘smells like cat wee’ to ‘DON‘T PUT IT ON YOUR INTIMATE PARTS IT BURNS!’ I don’t know about you, but this makes me long for more innocent times. I remember when autumn was just muddy walks and public information ads about the dangers of fireworks, not people moaning about their pumpkin spiced flaps.
VERDICT: Patch test
PUMPKIN SPICE WERTHER’S ORIGINALS
Even nice pensioners in armchairs aren’t safe from the onslaught. These soft caramels made from an old world recipe and then pumped full of artificial flavours are sure to get their teeth and their hearts racing. Maybe it’ll also make them want to indulge in other millennial-themed pursuits, like making a self-conscious TikTok while drinking iced coffee in the car, or talking about Mercury Retrograde at a pottery class. What next? Nitrous oxide at the drum and bass night?
VERDICT: Spicy grandpa
FLASH SPICED PUMPKIN ALL PURPOSE LIQUID
On a crisp late September morning, there’s nothing better than filling a mop bucket with this stuff and breathing in the soothing scents of nature. The smell of disinfectant, full of chemicals so abrasive that they could kill a squirrel at twenty paces, gives you a lovely warm feeling. Even more so if you put a shot of it in your morning coffee instead of syrup. You’ll be doubled up with autumnal joy for the rest of your life!
VERDICT: Flash, and your stomach lining is gone
NEW YORK PUMPKIN SPICE SPOOKY BAGELS
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that pumpkins are synonymous with Halloween, rather than with surly girls in Ugg boots ordering cold brew lattes. But these ‘New York’ bagels (actually made in Rotherham, fact fans!) have reminded me of the spooktacular meaning of autumn. Are they really spooky, though? Well, unlike, say, Mr Kipling’s un-terrifying Terrifying Toffee Whirls, or a picture of a ghost on the front of some Soreen, the prospect of eating a sweet, root vegetable-based bagel filled with industrial-grade cinnamon does feel quite frightening. I think I’d rather eat a grilled bat.
VERDICT: Circle of hell
BUMPER STICKER, TEMU
Hmm, trust Temu to be that person in the room who makes things weird. Still, this is useful information in case you’re in an accident, and then the paramedics can just hook you up to an IV of dog perfume, pop a Werther’s Original in your mouth and pray they can find an organ donor that’s as basic as you are.
VERDICT: For the love of gourd, make it stop
THING: DermaV10 Got Buns Hun Boob Mask
And finally, a question for those with knockers - have you ever felt the need to keep your boobs hydrated with two cartoon cupcakes impregnated with freezing slime? No, me neither.
I bought these from Home Bargains in a fit of Lucyverse-based madness and I can’t even bring myself to take them out of the packet. In my experience, sheet masks are like draping a jellyfish corpse over your face, so there’s absolutely no way I’m putting these anywhere near my ‘perky pair.’ Also, my pair hasn’t been perky since Princess Diana was alive, so at least the world would be spared the sight of these things staring sadly at the floor, then plopping onto the bath mat one by one like a couple of fried eggs sliding off a fish slice.
They’re also conceptually flawed. Buns are BUTTOCKS, so this one should be a bum mask (also not needed by anyone), and the boob mask should have been ring doughnuts with holes cut out of the middle to spare the trauma of frozen nipples.
Anyway, I don’t think Ieaving this to my family in my will is quite going to work, so if you want it, let me know and I’ll post it to you in a brown envelope with TIT MASK written on it in massive letters. Consider it an autumn treat.
VERDICT: Not ok hun
Noticed Ian laughing while I was eating breakfast. "What's so funny on your phone?"
"Oh, just this thing called The Lucyverse. I'm reading it before you are."
He got fed up of having to borrow my phone on a Monday morning to read you a while back – you've converted the lot of us!
This is a work of art