Beauty bible

Softly-softly does it, says Celia Walden

A SERIES OF LITTLE DEATHS: that’s what our lives are made up of. Some are so tiny you barely notice them: the airport pick-ups your boyfriend stops doing 12 to 14 months into your relationship; the first time your husband walks in on you in tights – and you don’t care. The moment you hear yourself use the phrase ‘circle back’ non-ironically. The admission, in your late 30s, that ‘oat milk in coffee isn’t actually that bad’. Because Gwyneth’s dairy-free and she oozes health, right?

The biggest little death in my life occurred last week, when I spent £15.99 on something called a Foot Muff Snug, which is essentially a hot-water bottle and slipper hybrid – and the only 100 per cent effective form of birth control out there. This was significant because I’ve long maintained that when you privilege comfort over looks and style, it’s basically time to pick out a headstone.

Those prohibitively expensive spa 90-minute treatments promising to restore ‘harmony’ and ‘unity’ have always been a pet hate. I’ve never had any interest in feeling harmonious, unified, pampered or indulged (I’ll get into all that, along with Wagner, when I’m old) – I only ever cared about being made to appear prettier than I am.

But comfort on a Foot Muff Snug level promotes a desire for pampering and indulgence. Why should beautifying sting, scratch and scrape? There must be products and treatments out there that are both efficient and able to massively up your daily pleasure quotient? As it turns out, there are…