Face Goop

Fish pedicure

M: Here, fishy fishy fishy.

E: What are you doing?

M: Man, they’re slippery aren’t they. Tell me about your trout tickling experience, E.

E: Ah, that. Well, M.

M: So, you were hanging out at River Cottage HQ…

E: No, I most certainly was not. Let me continue. As I was saying, “Well, M”.

M: What? No gazing longingly in to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall‘s eyes??? Gently stroking his soft curls.

E: That dude eats placentas I am not going near him.

M: Mmmm, the placenta diet for soft hair. Must try that one. CARRY ON.

E: I’m trying, believe me. I have not been to River Cottage or eaten placenta. I have – several months after the whole beauty world – had the famous fish pedicure. As so often, we are late to the party on this one.

M: What were your feet like, pre-fish?

E: Gross. Revolting. In fact, maybe my feet were River Cottage HQ for fish?

M: Stop stretching metaphors. Tell me about your calluses.

E: Surely you remember you told me they looked like .. what was it?

M: Oh god, yes.

E: Something gross.

M: Something out of a medieval trial.

E: Yes. I had the feet of a medieval peasant who had been tried for heresy.

M: Formless. Rotten. Black.

E: You got it. So. I show up at Fish Pedi Central with a paper bag over my head, obviously, in sackcloth and ashes, weeping apologies.

“Sorry fish”

“So so sorry”

M: But the fish are hungry. They don’t care. They eat those little pellets of dried food. Your feet are delicacies to the fish.

E: I suppose. So, a woman takes you aside and washes your feet. What a shit job that is. She’s, like, the fish fluffer.

M: Oh god. There’s something biblical about all of this.

E: I tried to apologise “Sorry, I have been nervously removing my epidermis recently”. She just smiled. The shop looks like this:

Which is fucking hilarious. Look at the little tanks of hungry piranhas!

M: Nice THRONE!

E: I do like a throne

M: Wow. You didn’t tell me you were the queen of the pedifish spa.

E: I totally was. My rotting black formless feet won me that title

M: Where’s your crown?

E: The fish ate it

M: So, cut the crap. How was it?

E: Well, you put your feet in the tank and the bastards just go for it. Your feet are instantly covered in hungry fish, and those fuckers TICKLE.

M: Oh god. The trout’s revenge. It’s a fishocalypse.

E: Yes. Hugh Placenta should never go, he’d leave with no feet.

M: No, he’d bring some buttered bread and grab a couple for his lunch

E: So. For the first few minutes you’re all “HOLY FUCK FISH ARE EATING MY FEEET”, whilst outside the window, normal people who are not beauty bloggists are pissing themselves laughing at you, staring, and pointing, explaining to their children:

“The lady is having her rotting feet eaten by fish”.

M: “See kids? This is what happens if you don’t MOISTURIZE”

E: “No darling, it’s very silly”

So. After the first few minutes you get over the weirdness and you’re just “yeah, fish. Eating my feet. What of it?”

But then a big persistent fucker began trying to bite the raw bit of my left foot, so I had to try and kick him away without the fish handler seeing. I think he needed to go to the Punishment Tank.

I wonder what this one did? Did it take off someone’s toe?

M: What would happen if you put your face in the bath, I wonder. So. Tell me. Were your feet soft as a baby’s?

E: No. They were like feet. My own medieval peasant feet. Maybe a tiny bit softer. Maybe. I am not convinced. But I tell you what, it’s totally fucking hilarious. I absolutely recommend it.

M: I think you’re supposed to go regularly, or something.

E: Yes, you are. The fish can only eat so much rotting foot skin at once.

M: I am jealous. VERY JEALOUS. Where’s my fucking fish throne, eh?

E: I dunno, M.

M: I might walk down to Portobello beach and see if a 3 eyed cod will have a go.

E: Do, do. And take pictures.

E was a guest of Aqua Sheko.