I often tell people I don’t wear (/use?) nail varnish. It’s not strictly true, but it’s as true as it needs to be for most purposes.

I used to once, but I haven’t regularly in years.

The following photo shows my not-empty tub of varnish removal pads. There were originally 30 in there, I haven’t counted, but I would estimate that there are at least 10 left. I bought it at a train station on the way to an oral exam in Hannover. That was in spring 2011. That’s how often I’ve taken it off.

(Totally irrelevant side story: I was in the sort of shop that sells nail varnish remover because I was trying to kill time so as not to have to hang round at the exam hall for too long before the exam. I wanted to be early but not so early that I could get too scared. There wasn’t a huge amount of choice of shops at the station, hence the nail varnish removal pad shop. I’d never seen them before and it saif they smelled fruity on the label. I am a sucker for good advertising ;).

When I finally sauntered into the exam centre expecting to find a crowd of people waiting, an examiner was the only person to be seen. “Jesska? Come on in. We were just wondering if you would turn up today. In 5 minutes you would have been confronted with a locked door..” Turns out my phone had not only automatically changed the clock to summer time, but also helpfully adjusted all the appointments in my calendar to match. Instead of being over an hour early, I was a couple of minutes short of missing the exam..(!!!) But… I got there just in time (they were only waiting for me because they’d been running early because this is Germany) and I sat it and I passed and the examination board said that I was good, so it all worked out in the end.. And at least I didn’t have time to get scared.. 😉 )

***

I went cycling at the weekend. It rained (obviously) but only a bit, and it was sunny in between the rain. As I was riding, my chain got stuck between my bike and the chain ring. Twice. Getting it out again was a bit of a challenge. (a bit of two challenges?)

Getting the oil off my fingers afterwards was even worse.

This was as good as I got before I got home.

The evidence was still very obvious after a couple of well planned attacks with soap and a nail brush.

Then I was invited out for dinner.

<insert mild panic>

Not only did I have to shower and find something appropriate to wear, I had to figure out how to make my hands marginally less grubby.

Nail varnish to the rescue.

I hate to admit it, but it did a fantastic job. 10 minutes concentration and a pot of dark purple polish painted over some of the oilier skin (cuticles?) and it wasn’t immediately apparent that I had been chain fighting.

Roll on this morning.

It seems nail varnish is not a very substantial decoration..

Oil-stained nails look even worse semi-covered with chipped nail varnish than just by themselves.

Which is why I found myself interrupting my breakfast to redo them.

See my cut off cycling gloves? That was a moment of genius forward planning – I could leave straight away instead of having to wait for it to dry before I could get ready. I am possibly also the only person who wears a cycling helmet to paint their nails.