When I was a teenager, I heard a report on the radio, an exposé of face creams. (Hadn't they anything better to do exposés on? At a time when Ireland was jackknifed from corruption? I swear to God.) Anyway, they picked on a particular brand whose press release promised that their night cream molecules would "enter" the skin and restructure from within. The crackshot journalist concluded that this was as impossible as pushing potatoes through the holes in muslin weave. I tried not to listen, I tried not to be influenced, but it left me a healthy dose of skepticism.
I know that nothing is going to reverse time. Apart from a deal with the devil, of course, and at the moment he 's refusing to return my calls.
But, at worst, using so much night cream that I slide off my pillow can't do me any harm. And if it's not doing me any good, it doesn't matter because I never use anything for more than a few months. Unlike po-faced French women who use the same brand from the age of fourteen until their deathbed, I'm a product slut. I love them all. If face creams were husbands, then I am Elizabeth Taylor.
The thing is that I'll try each product on its merits and I'll draw my own conclusions, and there are some products that I know make a difference. I've seen it with my own two (kohl-rimmed, mascaraed) eyes. It 's probably not fair to single out a special few for mention when there are so many good brands, but I'm going to anyway.
Example: after using Crème de la Mer for a month, I was looking so well, I got accused of having had BOTOX.
Example: if I have a late night and use Jo Malone 's protein serum before going to sleep, instead of waking up with a face like a pair of graying, saggy y-fronts, I look like I've had my full sixteen hours.
Example: if I've been hitting the chocolate hard and look spotty and sluggish, a go of Elizabeth Arden's Peel and Reveal will sort me out.
As the whole area of beauty becomes more high-tech and sophisticated, innovative products keep appearing. New areas of the face and body come under scrutiny, and suddenly a new special cream is required for them. And sometimes a cream on its own isn't enough. Sometimes you need serums too. Or finishing gear. And there are times when a little voice inside me asks, Do you really need this inner arm super-serum, to be worn under the ordinary serum and over the day cream? And I think, Feck it! Who cares! I love it!
Which brings me to my spirited defense.
Spirited defense: yes, I admit to a certain amount of guilt, but loving beauty products is not the worst thing in the world. It 's not like I'm doing cocaine or collecting Swatch watches or shooting quails or invading Iraq.
Everyone has to have a hobby.
Hand Upgrade
Until recently, I never took any interest in nail care, on account of never having any nails to care for—I wasn't a smoker so I had to develop some way of coping with stress.
Not that I didn't occasionally make the effort to grow my nails. When I was in school, the myth circulated that if you ate a cube of jelly a day you'd have fabulous long strong nails, but once I started into the jelly I could never stop at one cube; I'd always eat the entire packet, then have to face the wrath of my mammy when she went to make something to go with the custard and found I'd eaten it all.
Then the summer I was fourteen—and I don't know how it happened—all of a sudden I had a prize nail, a gorgeous, elongated, shapely creature on my ring finger, left hand, which I guarded and displayed like it was a Faberge egg. I almost kept my hand in a glass case for the entire summer and charged people to look. But then September arrived and the prize nail broke and that was the end of that.
I just wasn't a nail person. All my life I've hated my hands; I'm prone to short limbs anyway, and nowhere is it more pronounced than my fingers—short fingers, short, bitten, strangely shaped nails, that was just the way it was. No point wishing for things to be different.
Then, a couple of years back, I had to go to New York for work and a "well-wisher" took me aside and told me that unless I got my nails sorted out my career in the States was so OVER. She put the fear of God into me—I mean, what the hell could I do about my bloody nails? Fake it, she advised; thanks to the miracle of science, I could get my pitiful little mismatched stubs lengthened and strengthened with all sorts of fake jiggery-pokery.
I didn't believe her, nothing ever works for me, but I went along anyway out of curiosity to a new nail bar. Where I spent a long, boring—and painful—ninety minutes: my "well-wisher" hadn't warned me that it hurts as they solder the fakey nails to your real, crappy nails—but it was worth it. I emerged one amazed hour and a half later with ten supermodel-style nails. Unbelievably, they didn't look remotely fake, just very, very beautiful.
And suddenly, miraculously, with my long, glam nails, I was transformed. I thought I was IT. It wasn't just my nails which had been enhanced, my entire hand had been upgraded. Even my arms and shoulders looked more elegant. I kept clattering my new nails impatiently, even when I wasn't impatient—just because I could. I became more dynamic, I spoke faster and louder and gesticulated more with my hands. To my surprise, I became slightly bitchy; I think it 's easier to get away with catty comments when you've long nails. In fact, I felt it was nearly expected of me.
It wasn't all fun and games of course; there are always side effects—I could no longer type, I had to use a pen to make phone calls and it took me over ten minutes to pick a safety pin off the car pet (in the end I had to kick it up with the toe of my boot and catch it mid-air). None of which seemed like a problem! Instead I thought I was fantastically glam.
And how was I going to cope when I was under stress, once I couldn't bite my nails anymore? I contemplated getting false ones to bite, the way people get fake fags once they've given up smoking. Or indeed, I could take up smoking!
For the first time in my life I started buying nail varnishes; I felt as if I'd been finally let into a club that I'd always been barred from. Naturally, being me, I went a bit mental and went on an over-thetop rampage of opaques and clears and metallics and glitteries and opalescents . . .
Mistakes were made of course. I bought one varnish which was described as plum, but in reality it was chestnut—or in other words, brown. I looked like I'd got my all ten of my nails caught in a door. But we live and learn. I was on a steep learning curve and I had the occasional success. Another one, which the ad said had been "inspired by the dazzle of gemstones" was extremely glam: like I was wearing garnets on the ends of my fingers, and I kept telling dramatic stories just so I could wave my hands around and light up the air with flashes of luminous red light. Happy days . . .
Within no time I was utterly dependent on my nails. Without them I felt naked and devoid of power. However, nothing had prepared me for how high maintenance they were. I had to get them done every two weeks because they grew so fast—which was very odd because all my life when I'd been depending on my real, underneath, stubby nails to grow, the little shaggers had stubbornly refused to budge. It was like having to monitor the roots of my hair, only worse, because I only needed to get my roots done every three weeks. And the roots of my hair don't suddenly grow a long gray inch overnight—but breaking a nail was the work of an instant. And it happened. The first time, I was distraught at the sight of nine long, glossy talons and one short, bald, funny-shaped stub. In the olden days I'd have been first in the queue to laugh at a girl who was upset about breaking a nail. But it was all different now. I knew exactly how distressing it was, and a broken nail had the same effect on me as Kryptonite on Superman. It was an important life lesson to learn—you know what, I realized, we should never judge. Not until we 've walked a mile on another person's hands . . .
But eventually the maintenance began to weary me. Upkeep was a constant worry, requiring round-the-clock vigilance, and the nails seemed to grow faster and faster and break more and more often. When I got them redone the warm glow would last for about a day, then I'd chip the nail varnish or the edges would get raggy and start catching in my jumper or my own manky ridged nails would appear underneath the glossy fake on
es and I'd try to pretend it wasn't happening by painting over the join but I'd make a right shambles of it and get polish everywhere, as far down as my first knuckle . . .
In the end the worry broke me and it just wasn't worth it. Life 's too long. I'm back to my short, stubby, misshapen ones now, and contrary to what I once thought, it 's not so bad. At least now, in times of high tension, I've something to gnaw on.
Knickers: A Vexed Area
It used to be holiday brochures—whenever I was stressed or sad I'd take to the bed with a bundle of them (expensive ones, that you have to sometimes pay a fiver for), spend many happy hours in sunny places without any pesky jet lag or coming home to find my house has been burgled while I'd been away, and without fail, I'd be restored to myself. But recently my interest has specialized: I've become obsessed with spas. I read about them incessantly and it 's got so bad that I'm reluctant to go anywhere (city breaks, work trips, the post office) unless they have a spa attached. As a result I consider myself a bitteen of an expert; in fact, it could be my specialist subject on Mastermind. Let me share with you my hard-won knowledge.
1. Appointments. Vitally important, because how else will you get in and get rubbed? But beware! The bad news is that, based on my experience, there is a 58.7 percent chance that your appointment will be gammied up—sad but true. It must be all that essential oil in the air, softening brains and compromising concentration, but the amount of times spa receptionists have lost my booking or booked me for the wrong day or for the wrong things . . . Interestingly, it happens just as much in the dear places as cheapo ones. In a fabulous spa on the Barrier Reef, they had me booked in for everything I'd requested in my e-mail. But they were so superefficient that they'd done it twice, the two lots of treatments happening simultaneously—and they wanted to charge me for both. And in the world-famous Sanctuary, when I arrived with my sister— both of us in flitters and gagging for a comforting touch—they had no record of us. No record AT ALL. Even though I'd given them my credit card details and rung to reconfirm—nada. (And they were fully booked, so they couldn't fit us in.) Considering that most people go to spas because they're feeling frayed and fragile, this IS NOT GOOD.
2. Sound-proofing. Or lack thereof. Many spas have walls so thin, you can hear the people breathing in the next room. They're the good ones. In the bad ones, you can hear what the nextdoors are thinking. In London's extraordinarily beautiful Agua Spa (I mean, it really is, it looks like an artist 's impression of heaven), the treatment spaces are separated only by muslin curtains—did you ever hear anything so stupid in all your life? While I was being reiki'd and desperately trying to relax and get my money's worth, the woman in the next space was droning on to her therapist about how hard it was to be a mother, how she 'd forgotten what a good night 's sleep and uncracked nipples felt like, how she was dreading sex again . . . For the entire hour I had to fight against leaping off the table, pushing aside the muslin curtain and shrieking, "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!"
3. Reflexology. Don't be fooled—it 's not the same as a foot massage. Reflexology is good for you and like most things that are good for you—leg waxing, climbing Croagh Patrick, the truth about your dodgy boyfriend—it can hurt.
4. Face masks. In most facials there comes a point when they cover your face with plaster-of-paris style stuff and leave it to set into a hard, scary mask, then the girl murmurs something like, "I'll just leave you to relax on your own for a bit." She makes it sound like she doesn't want to leave, but that fifteen minutes of solitude is for your good. This is a complete fiction. While you are lying there blind and terrified with claustrophobia, she 'll be outside having a fag and making calls on her mobile.
5. An hour of bliss. When they say a treatment lasts for an hour, they really mean fifty minutes. If you're lucky. Latecomers are often allowed to run over into the next person's time (mine) but when the paraffin sock is on the other foot and they start my treatment late, they finish on time.
6. Opportunities for theft. An unexpected bonus—you have a relaxing massage or facial, then when your treatment is finished, the rubbing lady will withdraw, leaving you in the little room to get dressed. However, the sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that, very often, there are lots of products in the room. Trolleys and shelves groaning under the weight of specialcatering-sized gallon jars of lovely Decleor or Clarins or Elemis— and you are alone with them. This is an ideal opportunity for theft. Yes, yes, it 's immoral and illegal. I know. And smuggling them out in the pocket of your toweling robe might prove a bit of a challenge. But when we get to the next point, you'll be glad you did.
7. Pressure to buy products. Unfortunately it happens, although not usually in the top-end places. Nevertheless, nothing works faster to wreck your expensive buzz than being bullied into shelling out further readies when you already have a houseful of stuff you never use, or being made to feel like a stingy scuzz-ball who doesn't give a shite about her skin. However—and follow me closely here—I can provide you with the perfect defense. Instead of agreeing bitterly to buy the day cream. Oh, and eye cream. And the exfoliator. And the rehydrating mask, if they insist. You can just say, "Why would I need to buy that pitifully small 30g tube of Decleor when I'm just after nicking a gallon bottle of it from the treatment room . . . whoops!"
8. Knickers. A vexed area, without a doubt: to leave on or take off. If you leave them on, discomfort could mar your enjoyment, but if you take them off, there 's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide—every bit of you will be on display, in all your cellulitey glory (if you're me). I know they do that trick with the towels, holding them up and sliding them out from underneath, to protect our modesty—but it would be the work of an instant for anyone to sneak a look. Many beauticians I've spoken to about this issue like to make out that they're similar to doctors, that because they're looking at bums all day long, they no longer notice what any of them look like. Another fiction. Of course they're checking you out—I mean, wouldn't you? Not in a sexual way—more in a "There but for the grace of God goes my arse" way (again, if you're me). But for the massagee, it 's hard to relax and float away if you suspect your therapist is sniggering at the state of your bum. There are some places—notably the Oberoi in Mauritius where the therapists, although charming and warm, are steely professionals— where they would hardly raise a smirk at the sight of someone 's bum. Not even mine. I have only been once; however, I dream of going back. It 's a long way for a snigger-free massage, but worth it.
9. French facials. By this I mean a facial either received in France or administered by a French person on non-French soil.
Most facials are transcendent, extremely pleasurable things (apart from the fifteen minutes lying blind and sweating with claustrophobia while your mask "does") but the French have a totally different approach. They take skin care so seriously that their facials are almost medicinal. By this I mean painful and unpleasant. Starting with interrogation-bright lights shone on your dial so they can see just how bad everything is, followed by a drenching with scalding steam so dense and hot that you can't breathe, then reaching a crescendo of unpleasantness, all manner of squeezage: blackheads and whiteheads and other nastinesses. Then, for a grand finale they tell you afterwards, like you're being convicted of a crime, that your skin is in rag order, in absolute bits, possibly the worst they've ever seen and how could you have let this happen. However, this is not because they want to flog you stuff. It 's because they care. (Honestly.)
10. Face holes. Wonderful inventions! They've taken away the necessity, when you're lying on your stomach having back rubbage, of suffocating into your pillow. You lie facedown, stick your face through the padded hole—and breathe normally! (I don't know how we managed before them, I suppose death or brain damage from oxygen deprivation was just the risk I ran every time I had a back massage.) There 's just one thing and I wish someone had told me the first time I used one: the mark can last for up to a week.
A version of this was first published in Abroad, January 2004
Your Bad Health
Most of my life, I've enjoyed bad health. I develop a bad ear infection, necessitating antibiotics, most Thursdays, and I get everything that 's going—every cold, every bug, every virus—and usually manage to give it my own special twist. I can take an ordinary cold and via some cunning add-ons, like a strep throat, I can parlay it into something really dramatic and croakyvoiced.
This is due to a combination of factors.
a) I've no stamina and my immune system is like a rusting '89 Ford Fiesta.
b) I'm neurotic and a drama queen.
c) I love going to bed with a load of magazines and having people bring me cheese on toast and not being able to complain about it because I'm sick, see.
d) I'm extremely suggestible. If I hear of anyone else being unwell, I start to develop their symptoms. Which is fine when it 's an upset stomach or labor pains, but more of a challenge when it 's a twisted testicle.
If I'm very busy and stressed and I hear that a friend or family member is in bed with the flu, I always think, "God, the lucky yoke." You see, I'm just thinking about the lying-in-bed-havingsomeone-bringing-me-cheese-on-toast bit. I forget all about the feeling-atrocious bit, until it happens.
And then I'm very sorry. I don't like feeling atrocious, not one bit, and by the afternoon of the second day if I'm not starting to feel a good bit better, I get a flash of alarm and a little voice in my head says, This isn't right . . . This is no ordinary flu, I think. It 's far worse. It could be pneumonia. Or TB. Or cholera. And if it remains undiagnosed, I might die . . . (See, told you, drama queen.)