Template for a chill weekend up from Dublin: sitting around, drinking cups of tea in various people’s houses. Watching movies, drinking wine. Not expecting to wash much, to be honest. That’s not very high maintenance, is it now?

Er, so, then, why did I need all the stuff at left?

And all the makeup I brought and forgot to put in the photo — or it didn’t even occur to me to shoot it as it always goes with me anyway, like my keys, and my wallet.

So, what did I end up not using at all? The toothbrush>> JUST KIDDING. The Avéne cleanser, the Clinique Turnaround Concentrate sample, the Kiehl’s thing in the small blue tub.

Hmm. That’s not a terrible average, to be honest, and I had suspected that the cleanser wouldn’t get a look in.

I must highly recommend the Lush Silky Underwear Dusting Powder. I haven’t used dusting powder since I was a sprog, and this was great for, er, taking a bit of the pong off before the Big Easter Hill Walk through a bunch of woods, up and down boggy hills, to a lovely wee church on the side of the mountain. Not that there was anyone to offend, the gang of us were all in the same state, but I felt better in myself to have done even cursory grooming. I also lashed on some of the L’Oréal Nude Magique BB Cream, which is my absolutely new favourite thing, and swiped on some of my also-new-favourite-thing, Clinique’s Quickliner for Eyes Intense, because you never know who you might run into in the middle of a bog.*

Post-hike, with the last leg of it in bucketing down rain, I had a lovely bath and was sorry that I hadn’t brought along this egg from Lush, but my hostess had a gorgeously frothy bar of lavender soap that an Australian friend gifted her from Oz, and boy, would I like to know what that brand is.

Always on the job. But! The biggest asset to my three days with very little application of cleaning products will be revealed in the next post…

*No one.