Splits send me bananas but help is at hand
HACKS: they’re a right royal pain in the thumb. Or indeed anywhere else on your fingers, palms or even heels that these little blighters crop up.
In case you’ve lived a life sheltered from manual labour in the cold and wet of Scotland’s winter – and often its summer – I’m referring to the splits in the skin on your fingers which often develop when your hands have been exposed to the elements while working.
They inevitably tend to concentrate on the parts of your fingers where they’re most likely to get knocked or caught whenever you pick something up, no matter how much you try to protect them, sending a nasty shot of pain squirting all the way up to your elbow – and leaving you wincing and cursing their existence.
Now I’ve no idea how widespread these irritating afflictions are nowadays, as they’re pretty much the product of working in cold, wet, dry or dusty conditions, often when handling rough materials, harsh chemicals or even well fermented silage.
But these annoying little niggles are still well known in the farming world.
You might think gloves would offer some protection from the complaint – which is effectively the ends of your fingers fraying a bit. But, no matter how hard you try, you can never manage to complete a job without having to remove your gloves at some stage – and that’s enough to get these little pains started.
Hand cream helps but, even in an age when moisturisers and hair products for men are commonplace, there’s a reluctance among farmers to share details of our grooming routines, even if it means silently suffering finger hacks.
Now, unlike the big film stars with their endorsements of products designed to make you look 10 years younger, I’m not getting paid to tell you about a long-standing product which seems to be the only thing which can actually help.
Go into the chemists and ask the fresh-faced youth behind the counter if he has any Snowfire and he’ll probably just look at you blankly. However, get one of the more seasoned pharmacists and they will go to a drawer at the back of the shop, rake about for a bit and then bring you a brand new pack of this healing salve.
In truth, there’s probably nothing magic about it – a thick, waxy substance with enough plant infusions to make it green. But it sticks to the hacks, a pack lasts for years and it does seem to offer some relief – fingers (carefully) crossed.