Drowning in stuff

 I alluded earlier to a surfeit of hair products. In fact I have a surfeit of all sorts of products, to the extent that I feel somewhat oppressed at times, while still wanting more (of course). Part of the reason for this is that last year, shortly after being dumped, something surprising and nice happened. I won a draw at Harvey Nichols (my spiritual home) for the Harpers Hot 100 products - the best 100 beauty products of the year. Here are a few pictures of the bounty.

 With cats, for scale

The upper stratum

It will be a while before I have to buy any moisturiser again. Which given my current financial situation is a good thing.

Now quite whether these are the best 100 products is questionable. Some magazines, and I don't know if this applies to Harpers or not, select their 'best' products of the year largely on the input of the advertising department rather than through any merit on the part of the products. But I was pleased to see a bottle of Clinique Laser Focus serum in there and that is a product that would win my personal best of award any time - I've been using it for about 6 months and it is absolutely amazing in my opinion.

The other thing about winning stuff is that it brings you into contact with PRs and that is something that quickly disabuses one of any illusion that being a 'winner' is something that makes you special, deserving of respect or anything other than an accessory to a PR opportunity. Years ago I won a slogan competion with a prize of some Inwear clothes and it was made very clear indeed that if I could not get time off work to receive them on a day that was convenient for the PR rather than one that was convenient for me, I would forfeit the prize. This time round, it was a considerable amount of time before the prize was actually delivered and then only on the second day I requested, having sat in all day the previous week under the illusion that we'd arranged a delivery time. Plus some of the service related items in the prize like facials are only available in London. V. is currently enjoying them on my behalf. Lucky I don't like facials really.

But even so, it was just what I needed at a point when I was very low indeed and I managed to stretch the unpacking process over 4 days.