Manicures and pedicures explained

All typos are a result of trying to type at 6:30 in the morning before coffee on a mini computer. Try to imagine the horror.

I'm waiting for my Eurostar to whisk us away and back home, via Paris. So I thought I'd update you on the manicure/pedicure experiment. I surprised myself by quite liking it and I particularly recommend it to you, Keith. You'd look awesome with purple toes.

For anyone like me, who isn't exactly an habituee of nail salons, I thought an explanation of what happens might be helpful, in case you ever have to go to one and pretend to know what you're doing. A manicure is fairly easy. They soak your nails in some hot orange water thing, scrape the crap off them, cut the dead skin away, file your nails into the right shape, and then paint them the colour of your choice. (Metallic purple, in my case.) Then you get a nice hand and forearm massage, in the place I went to, leaving your hands and arms smelling pleasantly of coconut.

The pedicure was a similar thing for feet. But more complicated. And with an awesome chair that gives you a massage to distract you from the grossness that is your feet. I want one of those chairs. Think how much better my blogposts could be! I urge you to start up a collection for me!

Anyway, feet. You put your feet in a hot water footbath thingy, then the same scraping the nails happens, along with cutting away the dead skin near your toes. Another soak in the hot water (which is suspiciously blue, like cartoon water), and your feet are now sufficiently softened for the Potato Peeler of Doom to deal with them. This revolting stage of the proceedings is not for the squeamish - your dead skin is scraped off, much like peeling a potato. The poor, poor woman who was doing it. Then you get the remaining dead bits sanded off with a block of sandpapery sponge, and another soak in the hot water. Finally, you get a massage in green gritty gunk to do something nice to your skin. It smells better than it looks. Once that's washed off, you're given some fetching yellow foam flipflops and a purple thingy to seperate your toes from each other (poor, lonely toes). Your toes get painted (metallic purple, or colour of your choice) and little shiny bits of glass get superglued to your toes in whatever pattern you'd like (I have three in a line). Chair massage continues throughout. (Did I mention how much I like this chair?)

I did have some brilliant photos of my feet in flipflops and separator thing, but they are sadly stuck on my mother's phone. So will likely languish there for ever. Too bad.

Anyway, time to find coffee and get ready for Paris. Enjoy your week!