Ooh, get you!
Dad – look away now, this is girly stuff. Well, I’m glad to report that my first step towards smartening up went as planned, if somewhat painfully. Hubby promised to come home early and I booked myself into a nail bar at the unfeasibly large shopping centre to have something done to my rather shameful nails. I told her that I wanted to be smart but didn’t want to go too Footballers’ Wives (how do they pick their noses with those great big talons?). I was advised to go for ‘gel overlays’ whatever the hell they are, and arrived for my appointment to be introduced to a very sweet, shy Chinese lady. I was parked on one of those odd wheelie stools that shoot from under you if you so much as shift position (she actually fell off hers while leaning across to get something – and that’s not something I made up to funny-up my blog – she really did.) Well, I now know that gel overlays involve said sweet Chinese lady viciously rasping away at the top layer of one’s nails in order to rough it up a bit, obviously so the new gel bits can stick to it. This was all very well, except a couple of times she missed and rasped away the top layer of my fingers. Also, no-one tells you that this rasping business gets very hot, and after trying to be brave for a couple of minutes actually had to shout ‘ow!’ and yank my finger away. Sweet Chinese lady went ‘sowwy’ and looked suitably chastised.
So taking this as a bit of encouragement and being a friendly sort of type I attempted some conversation but this proved a bit of a problem as she was evidently quite newly over here from China and didn’t speak much English. I would qualify this (unless you think I’m being unkind, which I’m certainly not) by saying that her English is considerably more advanced than my Chinese (or Cantonese or whatever) so one point to her then. I’m absolutely appalling at understanding what anyone is saying unless they speak like Anna Ford on the BBC and I am struggling somewhat in my current location (more of that later) so I knew this might be a problem.
Anyway back to the sweet Chinese torture lady. After I smiled in an (hopefully) encouraging way, she returned the smile (she was very pretty which somewhat went against how viciously she was attacking my thumb) and enquired ‘you wan wipe?’ in a helpful way. I did my usual ‘er…..’ in order to give myself some time to work out if I did indeed want a wipe, but couldn’t work out what she meant, so settled on ‘er..I don’t know, do I?’ This brought on more shy giggling and a repeat of ‘you won wipe?’ so it was obviously the wrong answer. Now looking slightly less shy and a bit exasperated, she waved a bottle of stuff in front of me, which was gooey and said ‘Bright White’ on the label. Aah. Finally I dropped in and said yes please, I did want white bits on the end. This, apparently is the very crux of the Footballers’ Wives grooming thing – you need white bits on the end. I know this because I read ‘Closer’ in the dentists and Posh has got them. Enough said – if it’s good enough for Posh then bring it on.
The rest of it was slightly less tortuous, if very long winded, and I was quite enjoying having the stuff put on my nails, then having my hands posted into a little blue UV light thingy that was kind of like an other-worldly glowing blue letterbox, when she started the rasping thing again. Apparently after two layers you need to rub it down and put on a top coat (kind of like glossing woodwork I guess) and there, finally, were my new shiny nails. Chinese torture lady smiled triumphantly and said ‘mice huh?’. I did wonder whether this was the opener of a conversation about rodents (I was just about to tell her about my rabbits), but realised just in time what she was getting at. ‘Yes, very nice’ I smiled back. We had connected.
All the way home I fiddled with my hair, checked my watch and generally waved my new shiny nails about while not concentrating on the road at all. How I managed to get back home without adding to Ireland’s buoyant roadkill population I’ll never know, but I did and wow, I’m groomed. And when the plasters come off the bits of skin that were accidentally rasped off my fingers, I’m going to look well Posh!
