Hand belief at Cabot Circus

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

“Do you know about the Dead Sea?” was her opening gambit. She was tiny and had an unusual French sounding accent. Gregarious strangers befuddle me, so her deadpan confidence put me ill at ease.

I assumed she was about to tell me how her life had been recently turned around by the power of Jesus Christ so I rallied a curt “yes” and tried not to make eye contact.

“Have you got a minute” she demanded, positioning herself between me and freedom.

“Not really” I fibbed

Unperturbed she led me to a table and told me to take my gloves off. My pulse quickened with anxiety, yet for some reason I clumsily obeyed, tangling my fingers in a woollen prison as she stood there silently basking in my awkwardness.

She then explained that salt from the Dead Sea had curative properties and listed a series of disfiguring skin complaints before asking if I suffered from any of them.

“I don’t think so” I whimpered, “This is just how I look”

She turned my palms up into begging position and slopped some abrasive gunk onto them. I just stood there staring at her, arms outstretched, like a lobotomised Oliver Twist. The substance looked and smelled like old urinal cakes mashed up with cod liver oil.

She ordered me to massage it into my hands and continued into a dizzying, machine gun like sales pitch. Occasionally I chipped in with questions regarding the validity of her claims and enquiries as to who had carried out all this salt based research. These interruptions visibly irritated her, upsetting her flow and forcing her to tersely repeat herself. When my skin was suitably coated, she asked me how my hands felt.

“Oily” I replied

“That’s a great answer” she spat through a clenched smile. She positioned my hands over a pristine white ceramic bowl and sprayed them with liquid from what looked like an old Cillit Bang bottle.

“Did you wash your hands before leaving the house today?” She proffered like it was a perfectly normal question to ask someone you’d only met two minutes ago.

Back off you slop flogging quack, first you tell me I look like I’ve got impetigo, now you’re casting aspersions about my personal hygiene. I compounded my vitriol into a docile “Yes”.

Her eyes gestured towards the bowl before raising back up to confront me accusingly. I glanced down to see the bottom of the bowl was covered in droplets of murky liquid shame.

“Dead Sea salt cleans UNDER the skin, UNDER the skin”

She enthused as if she were auditioning for a part in my next nightmare.

At this point she must have sensed she was beginning to freak me out, so decided to change tack. She gently dabbed my hands dry and started to tenderly massage moisturizer into them, then came the good cop routine. “I like your hair, and that’s a cool jacket, I stopped you because you’re very well groomed”

There was an uncomfortable silence as my brain struggled for a suitable reply, I couldn’t find one so blurted

“My girlfriend says I look like a tramp”. Cue another awkward silence.

“£39.99” She sighed resignedly.

As I put my gloves back on, she gave me a look which suggested that I’d been wasting her time. I felt guilty, I’m not sure why.

I wandered around for a few hours with oleaginous slime festering between the webs of my fingers and the inside of my gloves. If see her again and she stops me in the street, I only hope it’s because her life has been recently turned around by the power of Jesus Christ, or Meher Baba, or Satan.

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