You Beauty - Annabel Rivkin’s cabinet of wonders

I don’t know that I could be proper friends with a woman who can eat just half a Mars Bar.

And I just don’t feel any affinity with females who have biweekly pedicures throughout the winter months. I mean, haven’t they got telly to watch? Every six weeks or so I bash away at a heel with a foot file and then collapse, panting, one foot vaguely smoother, the other like an old goatherd’s.

But pedicure season struck when the sun smiled unexpectedly on us city folk and we reached, chirpy as crickets, for the sandals, put them on, took them off, booked an appointment, cancelled that appointment because of a work/child/morale crisis and rebooked for ten days’ time, and have been plodding around disconsolately in boots or ballet shoes all the while.

Chanel always delivers a nail colour that we don’t know we want and don’t think we would wear until we see it in that solid little black-topped bottle. And then we must have it. That is the stuff of waiting lists. I remained immune to the allure of past hits: noirs, greiges, pistachios. But this summer Chanel has gone all cheerful, in line with spring’s pastel craze. Can’t see yourself in a pale green blazer? Or a lemony jean? Just you wait…

Chanel has named this season’s hues after, well, this season. April is plummy; May is bay pink; June is my favourite, a pale, powdery apricot. A proper pastel. Like ice cream. A sort of antidepressant for feet but a fashionable one. They say that one of the secrets of contentment lies in noticing the tiny miracles. And beaming, peachy toes might just be one of them.

Chanel Le Vernis nail colour in June, £17.50, at selfridges.com