The Cheese Grater

It's been quite a long time since I wrote a blog entry about my feet (the last one if you wish to refer back was titled "massaging me bits"), so thought I'd update you with my latest pedicure tip.

Despite using the massager, I am still suffering from very sore feet a lot of the time. One of the problems I have is a huge build up of hard dry skin on my heels, and to a lesser degree other parts of the foot - and before you all start going "urgghh, gross", I reckon this is something loads of people have issues with, yet for some reason it seems to be a taboo subject.

Now you can splash out good cash going to see a specialist, or you can follow a little bit of advice I am going to offer you now.

It's generally acknowledged that you do need to look after your feet, and this can involve moisturising with special creams, pumice stones and such like, but quite honestly I find a lot of this ineffective.

Let's take pumice stones. I have tried these on and off other the years, and various other scrub type products, but they just aren't strong enough to deal with my hooves. Last time I tried a pumice stone it couldn't cope - I may as well have been rubbing an oxo cube on them - the stone came off considerably worse.

Slightly more promising was the "ped egg" which we acquired a few years back, but even this couldn't do much more than scratch the surface - bit like using sandpaper - might smooth out the edges a bit but not really hitting the spot.

So none of these things "man size" enough to take on this job - but sitting in the cupboard for a long time tempting me to have a go has been the household object as depicted below.

Parmesan, anyone?

Now when I initially broached this idea with Claire, she was not particularly impressed. At first I thought this was due to her concern at my potential self-mutilation. However once we discussed it at length, it transpired that her misgivings were more about future usage of the cheese grater. Personally I can't see a problem - quick spin through the dishwasher and it's as good as new, and I can think of worse things I could do e.g. scratching my back with a fork and putting it back in the drawer when no-one's looking.

So I went for it - sat on the sofa watching TV and it was remarkably successful - got all the hard dead skin off and gave quite a smooth finish at which point I applied some special foot cream and the end result was pretty decent all round. Admittedly the sofa cushion did look as if someone had tipped a sherbet dib-dab out on it, but that was soon hoovered up. And once the grater had been through the dishwasher, it was as good as new - in fact were I not writing about it, no one would ever know!

If you decide to try this, you want to use the back of the cheese grater as shown above - i.e. the very small holes - I would not recommend using the side facing the front - now that probably could hurt.

Also perhaps I should put in some disclaimer at this point to absolve myself of any responsibility should anyone end up hacking half their foot off as a consequence of following my "advice" in this blog entry.

Anyway I'm not the first person to have tried this - I typed in "using a cheese grater on feet" into Google earlier and picked up a few hits, so feel free to research further at your leisure.

Oh - and one other thing - in the unlikely event I ever decide to hold some sort of Italian dinner party at my house and the even more unlikely event that you find yourself invited - I'd pass on the Parmesan.

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Jason xx