I might have guessed from the mini-monsoon that blew through the city over the weekend that the water’d be a bit rough. Single Girlfriend confessed as we stepped aboard that she and moving boats/cars/planes don’t always see eye to eye.
As the boat sat dockside waiting for its passengers, it dipped and pitched like George Clooney’s craft in The Perfect Storm. Single Girlfriend got progressively greener. Not having a change of clothes with me, I shifted over one seat. ‘We can always take the MTR instead. Are you sure you’re all right?’ I asked, now concerned that I’d have to carry her, soldier-with-wounded-friend-style off the boat.
‘Yep, fine. I’m just going to look out at the horizon for a little while.’
‘We’ll take the MTR back okay?’
‘Sure, that’s probably a good idea.’
We did make it across the harbour, with no display of stomach contents, to the Peninsula for afternoon tea.
The room is beautiful, as you’d expect of a 100+ year colonial hotel, but, in what I’m sure was a risk that the architects never considered, it no longer has a view of the waterfront, but of an entire row of buildings that were built on the filled-in bit of the harbour in front of it.
‘Glass of champagne?’ Asked Single Girlfriend, now fully recovered from her ordeal.
‘For medicinal purposes?’
‘Of course.’ There are many worse ways to spend an afternoon.
Thus fortified, we made our way back to Hong Kong-side, where Single Girlfriend expressed her ardent desire to get a mani-pedi. For me this sounds about as pleasant as having my teeth drilled. But my friend traveled 13 hours in economy class, sitting next to a man with no respect for personal space, in a seat with a non-functioning movie screen to visit, so I was determined to humour her. Besides, I figured the champagne might dull the teeth-grindingly horrible experience of having my nails filed.
We found a place near the escalators. But when we went inside (pushing a non-descript buzzer that opened a steel reinforced door … there must be a lot more money in nail salons than I’d assumed), we were told to come back in 45 minutes when they’d have two chairs free.
‘Let’s get a drink.’ says Single Girlfriend.
Is it Milk Thistle that is supposed to correct ailing livers? I wonder if they can put it into my cocktail.
Two glasses of wine later my feet are soaking in hot water and the woman in front of me is sharpening her tools on a leather strap. Or at least is seemed that way.
She started gently enough with some sort of scissors, which didn’t hurt. Then she graduated to a file that I believe is more usually used to shave down lopsided doors. I began to give her pointed looks, as if to say ‘I will not hesitate to knock your teeth out if you hurt me at any point during this process’. Through the miracle of non-verbal communication, she understood perfectly, and stopped grinding away quite so enthusiastically.
Meanwhile Single Girlfriend, who is no stranger to foot pampering, is chatting away like she’s not losing bits of her foot that may be important in allowing us to walk upright.
The moment came, as I knew it had to. She dragged an emery board across my big toenail. I made a noise to tell her how much I enjoyed that sensation, and she stopped abruptly.
‘Please.’ I gasped, ‘No emery board.’
‘Just a little?’ She asked.
Not unless you want to go to the hospital. ‘No, none. Please.’
‘You not let me work!’ she cried, like Picasso being relieved of his brushes. She jealously eyed Single Girlfriend’s feet, being whittled away at, no doubt wishing she’d made a different choice in customer. To prove her mettle, she then took a gleaming instrument and began to run it across the sides and bottom of my foot. Bits of foot flaked off on to the towel.
‘What’s that?’ I cried to Single Girlfriend (who by this point might have wished she’d left me at the bar).
‘It’s a razor.’
‘What do you mean, a razor?’ I asked, remembering the shaved deer antler I’d seen in a shop just the previous day. The detritus on the towel looked remarkably similar.
‘She’s shaving the calluses off your foot.’
‘But I need those, don’t I?’
‘For what?’
I admitted I wasn’t sure, but have to think that if my body sees fit to make a callus, there must be a good reason.
The wine must have had influenced my choice in fingernail colour. In the bottle it looked pretty and pink. On my hand it looks decidedly porn star. And today at a meeting of lovely British women, at a venerable old ladies' club, one actually said when I expressed my slight doubt about the colour: “It looks like something my 15 year old niece would wear.”
Meaning that I’m walking around Hong Kong with underage porn star hands.