Manicure

I found my PA Lydia in the kitchen at work this afternoon scrubbing my cup before coffee break. “No, no, no” – I scolded. “You should never have do that... Your hands and nails should never be used as tools. Get some money from petty cash and go buy yourself some Marigolds and a dish mop.”

This evening after work I took Lydia to The House of Fraser for a manicure. I try to be a good role model and general super big sister to her, and used a favoured phrase of my mother's “You reap what you sew” sweetie, when Lydia appeared shocked by the price of our treatments. It was my treat, so I paid (clearly), and I was keen to point out that if a girl ensures she appears top quality, she will attract a top quality husband...

Lydia has been describing to me the horrors of her dreadfully ineligible young man. Any chap who refers to a lady’s lingerie as her “under crackers” and drinks beer straight from a can, is simply NOCD (not our class darling) and certainly not marriage material. “Dump him,” I insisted…

We were sitting next to each other in the middle of the sales floor (these nail bars really are dreadfully open and exposed) fingers and toes submerged in bubbles, occasionally sipping grande latte from paper Starbucks cups when I noticed to our left two enormous black leather arm chairs. You know the type of chair that reclines and the foot rest comes out (dreadful ugly things). Women were actually queuing up for “threading”(a super thorough plucking type of depilation – usually for eyebrows). It is simply all the rage…

Words cannot express the horror I experienced when I realised one of these customers actually having the whiskers on her chin removed in the middle of this open shop floor!!! The young girl carrying out the treatment was virtually perched on the customer’s chest without so much as a screen to spare the customer’s blushes!

I am sooo not joking when I tell you that I almost hyperventilated with horror. An open shop floor in an Oxford Street department store really is not the time or the place! What is going on? Had the customer lost her mind?

Which is more humiliating do you suppose, actually realising you are growing a beard, or having it removed in a public place for all the world to see? I grabbed my latte and my PA and left the House of Fraser before the said customer could present her bikini line for depilation – what has happened to our culture? Where is the refinement and beauty?

Well, I can safely say, I shall cling on to the remnants of civilisation right here in perfect Dulwich…