We write this from the darkest, dampest place on earth: We haven’t even seen the sun for three weeks, a situation both compounded by and resulting from the fact that we are so jetlagged that we wake up at two o’clock in the afternoon. And we go to sleep at four in the morning. This is after a day spent eating Kit Kats and potato chips. We are going to go through immigration on Tuesday and they are going to say, “You cannot be an American citizen; clearly you are a whale, and your home is the sea.” Perhaps they will load us into a van and drop us into Long Island Sound, so we can be free to follow our aquatic dreams.

In all this damp darkness, there has been one ray of sunshine (metaphorical, obviously), and that is the sales. Several days ago, we discovered what we can only believe to be a fantastical error: $32 Korres shampoo-shower gel sets for $8 at Boots. Why Boots carries Korres, we don’t know. Why their entire Korres stock was 75% off, we don’t know. Maybe, we reasoned, British people didn’t like Korres the way we don’t like Jerry Lewis but the French can’t get enough of him. “You don’t understand,” we said to our Scottish Friend, who is, in any case, male, and all, “Let’s find some haggis and neeps,” attempting to again explain why “turnips” are pronounced “neeps” while all we cared about was filling our arms with all the Korres we could carry.

We only actually bought one vanilla-cinnamon shower gel. Surely there would be even more delightful options, at Boots throughout the country. We were sure that the remainder of our trip to this damp kingdom would be spent skipping from Boots to Boots, buying up Korres like discounted stock, possibly reselling it on eBay. We would have gifts to give friends who aren’t good-enough friends to deserve thoughtful, non-shower gel presents for years to come. And so we went to every Boots between Dundee, Scotland, and London, England, to the eternal dismay of the Scottish friend, who was all, “Haven’t we already been to Boots?” and “Why do you need shower gel that costs £3?” to which we would of course reply, “Because it usually costs $20, that’s why,” even though we have never, in our lives, purchased Korres before, because it smells nice, but it’s not all that. But we wanted to hunt and gather it. Sort of like the way a vampire gets a taste for blood. Except with vanilla-cinnamon shower gel. Searching every Boots for Korres was sort of like looking for gold bars hidden behind the men’s urinals at every McDonald’s between Boston and Philadelphia, minus the fear of (a) hepatitis or (b) coronary disease. And equally successful.

We bring you the two on-sale Korres products we could find online (more can be found here.) However, 25% is not 75%, and certainly not sufficient for little dances of joy, despite whale-like fitness level, in the store, in front of the display (see display, if not dance, at top.)

We are going to go to Boots tomorrow, too.

1: Korres Sunflower Extract and Vitamin F Shampoo. Doesn’t Vitamin F sound totally made up? Was $17, now $13.60

2: Korres Natural Body Milk at CB2, which is apparently a furniture store that also sells “body milk,” which itself sounds weird out of context. We will just add here that CB2 makes our favorite under-$1000 couch.