A question I get asked, with almost alarming regularity, is, what’s the best advice Mammy Keyes ever gave me. Well, since you’re wondering, it was these words: “A fool and her money are soon parted.” And in fairness, I’m not entirely sure it was advice, as much as a lament.
As a youngling I was a credulous fool, willing to believe any mad claims. Not because I was entirely stupid, but because I desperately wanted the world to be more exciting and thrilling than it actually was.
However, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Garments that claimed to be “one size fits all” more often than not transpired to be “one size fits none”.
Hairdressers that trumpeted “No appointment necessary” would act downright scornful when I waltzed in, appointmentless, dodging the tumbleweed on a Monday morning, vainly hoping for a blow-dry.
Or those bras that bragged about being adaptable in 10 different ways – halter-neck, strapless, low-backed, one-shouldered – actually didn’t manage a convincing job in any of those ways.
I’ve learned the hard way that things that claim to do everything are more likely to do nothing.
But I've found something that is bucking a lifetime trend: the Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse.
Right, let’s unpack this: it’s a “dry” oil (witchcraft!) that claims to be suitable for face, hair and body. Immediately this sweeping declaration has me snarled up into a barbed-wire ball of conflicting expectation – in the red corner, we have the irrepressibly hopeful village-idiot part of my psyche ready to go head-to-head with my perpetually disappointed, bitter-faced inner cynic, who is smoking Sobranies in the blue corner.
Because seriously, how could something that’s okay for the peasant-like skin of my shins, say, be worthy of anointing the diva-esque skin of my face? It’s agin God and nature!
As for using the same product on my face as on my hair – this is outrageous blasphemy! But I tried it – and it's lovely. Ordinarily my split ends are so defiant that my hair looks like an illustration of a pair of lungs. Not so after a spritz of this gear. My shins feel supple and – the acid test – my face glows but isn't shiny. (Big difference.)
The "dry oil" claim isn't about the oil itself, but how it behaves on skin and hair. When we hear "oil", we tend to think of heavy and wet and greasy. But this "dry" oil is simply made of smaller molecules that absorb more easily. So apparently not witchcraft.
Finally, this oil smells like summer holidays, if that’s your bag. (By now, you probably know that I would prefer to live in a land of perpetual autumn. However, I accept that I’m in the minority.) But other than that, I won’t have a word said against it.
