Making It Up As I Go Along Read Online Free PDF Page A

love nail
varnish, so I’ve always painted my toenails. But I would punish my fingernails byshowing them the varnish and saying, ‘Lovely, isn’t it? Well, NONE
for you!’
    Then I started getting pedicures from my lovely
friend Helen Cosgrove. She’d paint my toenails some gorgeous colour and then she’d
insist on also painting my fingernails, even though I’d be shouting, ‘No, Helen, no!
They don’t deserve it. Don’t encourage them.’
    However, I quickly grew to love having colouredy
fingernails. I’m a divil for bright colours. They have a huge effect on my mood. They
cheer me up enormously. When my nails are painted, it’s like having fruity hard-boiled
sweets sellotaped on to the ends of my fingers. Nice nails make me deeply happy. (When I can
force myself to do my gratitude list – I’m supposed to do it every night, but to be
honest I only do it about once a week – coloured nails always feature. Hey, you take your
pleasures where you can.)
    Then Helen gave me a present of a bottle of lilac
nail varnish and, amigos, that was my gateway drug …
    I started buying nail varnishes. Left, right and
centre, as is my way, when I’m in the grip of an obsession. I was – and still am
– extremely attracted to Rimmel ones. They have a massive range of colours, and as well as
having all the pinks and reds they also have edgy, directional colours – I’ve just
bought a yellow one from them. And the thing about Rimmel is, their nail varnishes cost half
nothing.
    Then I found an
even cheaper brand
. In
my local chemist, where I spend a goodly portion of my life with my various ailments, I found a
brand called Essence and I got the cutest glittery mauve one the other day for one euro,
seventy-nine cents!
    Now I must veer off slightly to another story
here, if you’ll bear with me. About a year ago, I started getting the Shellac and/orGelish nails (they’re much the same). I’m sure you know about
them, but just in case you don’t, they are sometimes called the ‘two-week
manicure’. And sometimes they are even called the ‘three-week manicure’, and I
can personally vouch for that. And in a world that’s full of marketing spake followed by
crushing disappointment, this was a THRILLING success for me.
    I go to Elena and Mihaela in Pretty Nails Pretty
Face in Stillorgan, where they paint some chemical on my nails, stick my hand under an LED light
for thirty seconds, then paint on some lovely colouredy varnish and stick my hand under the yoke
again, then once more. The nails are dry instantly!
    So I’m spared all that awful time hanging
around, being underfoot in a saloon, waiting for them to dry. (It’s not so bad with hands,
but my idea of hell is the time spent waiting for painted toenails to dry so that I can put my
socks and boots back on and continue with my life. It is a purgatory of a time. I get more and
more panicky as the minutes elapse – twenty minutes, thirty minutes – and I’m
still not allowed to leave, and often I jump up and grab my socks and cry, ‘It’s
fine! All dry! Please let me through. Leaving, goodbye, thank you! See you in three weeks, but I
must leave now because I just must. No need to check the nails are dry, I am a woman of my word.
Goodbye.’ Of course the nails are NOT dry and I am NOT a woman of my word and I get the
pattern of my socks imprinted on to my still-wet toenails, but if I’d waited one second
longer, I would have gone bananas. And I know I should get flipflops, but I live in Ireland. For
much of the year I’d get trenchfoot if I started sporting flipflops.)
    So yes, Gelish or Shellac or Artistic Colour
Gloss and their ilk are wonders. They don’t chip (except sometimes you can be unlucky and
bang your hand off the corner of something and a piece of your Shellac-iness will choose to
leave you). They comein a range of colours that is growing all the time,
and they are getting blues and purples and turquoises and other lovely shades. And the best bit
is