For Xmas, my mother gave me a pedicure voucher, which was a lovely present. It was for a place in Johnsonville Mall, which is less lovely, but luckily that’s on the way to Lisa’s house.

Of course, for presents, you’re not supposed to know how much they cost, but I can tell you anyway that the pedicures at 4 Season Nails cost $45. Do I recommend them for your pedicure needs? No, I really don’t. The place is your standard mall nail bar, with manicure counters and some throne chairs with footbaths, and it reeks of chemicals. So far, so typical, and that’s fine, it’s not a place you’d spend forever in, unless you work there. But they also have a large flatscreen TV that was showing Honey on a loop, which would have been distracting enough for people who want to concentrate on their magazines (a couple of months out of date at that), but the girl who was working on my feet kept watching the screen instead of what she was doing, and given that she was attacking my cuticles with sharp metal things and I was crying out in pain, she really should have been paying more attention before she actually cut me and I yelped and started bleeding. Not cool. It was the most painful treatment I’ve ever had – the filing was really rough, she didn’t actually cut my nails (they were really long), just the skin around them, and the (threadbare) towel fell off the footrest so my feet were slipping around everywhere. The topcoat she used on the OPI polish must have been good cos my toes aren’t chipped two weeks later, but seriously, what was supposed to be a relaxing experience turned out to be all kinds of torture instead. It may have been the particular technician and not the place that sucked, but given that I didn’t get her name, I can’t tell you who to avoid, so I suggest just skipping the place altogether.