Crappy crystals

THIS WEEK: Crystal products, Long Chips

THING: Crystal products

This time of year is riddled with amateur witchiness. The veil is thin, and everyone from a 15 year old girl who senses a slight draught in their room to a post-menopausal woman who hasn’t had their roots done for a while is lining up to give you a ‘reading.’

I’m not sure what the selection process is for modern witches, but it doesn’t seem to be very rigorous. It used to be: ‘Are you a single woman over 40 who lives on her own in the village and enjoys her life? BURN HER!’ Now it seems that as long as you’ve got a pair of black leggings and a Himalayan salt lamp, you can set up your own tarot/tea leaves/palm reading/aura business and charge £30 to tell people they’re probably going to die.

Oh, but before you do that, you will also need crystals – the must-have accessory for any up and coming fake witch. Yes, apparently some cheap rocks from the bong shop can give you confidence, clarity and healing, so let’s put a few to the test!

JADE ROLLER

Jade is supposed to signify abundance, healing and good luck. So the beauty industry have taken this auspicious gemstone and put it on a stick so you can pointlessly rub your face with it and add a further task to your endless to-do list. I bought one of these the other day, thinking that the cooling stone might make my Morgan Freeman-esque eye bags smaller, and if not, maybe all that abundant jade would pay off my mortgage, but nothing has happened yet. I was also told that you have to keep it in the fridge for maximum soothing effect, but I accidentally put it next to the garlic and now my face looks and smells like a Goodfella’s pizza.

VERDICT: Jade Baddy

B&M Crystal candles, Aquamarine

You know me, I love a crap candle, and this is B&M’s latest attempt to appeal to young people who need a calming, uncluttered environment to look at their phone in. There are several in this series, which all have stones in them that look like they’ve come from the bottom of a fish tank. They all smell pretty much the same, too - ie. of wax slightly tinged with fabric conditioner. This one has an almost undetectable aroma of Lenor and since I lit it, the crystals have disappeared without trace into the wax, so now I have no peace, relaxation, healing or calm - just a big fire hazard full of gravel with a B&M sticker on it.

VERDICT: Chakra Can’t

7th Heaven Cosmic Rose Quartz Peel-Off Mask

Can this fine product save the day? It’s from the beauty emporium Sephora – sorry I mean Savers – and as you can see it contains rose quartz, which has something to do with love or whatever. But how heavenly, purifying and cosmic IS it?

Well, the answer is, not at all. I know you’re meant to put face masks onto clean skin, but I’d just had two pints and a baked potato and I was fucked if I was washing my face first. Even so, I was really hoping for the incredible sequinned effect on the packet. However, this product should be banned under the Trades Descriptions Act because instead of disco glitter, it was like Sainsbury’s Basics strawberry jam, and it made me look like my skin had been flayed off in some kind of terrible workplace accident:

Put it in the logbook, Janice! (Spots, model’s own)

Anyway, after a while, it hardened to a thin layer of pink glue. I was absent-mindedly peeling bits of the mask off while I was writing this, and the next thing I knew…

THE DOG WAS EATING IT, THINKING IT WAS HAM.

VERDICT: Crystalmighty, call the vet

THING: Long Chips

After all that woo woo, we’re all going to need a snack, and boy, do I have a discovery for you! I bought these in a service station just outside York where they were selling loads of them off cheap. Why? I wondered. They are quality since 1986! Also, haven’t you often yearned for a crisp that’s long, rather than short? One that’s made of flattened mashed potato and has been flash fried for 10 seconds?

Anyway, I had zero hopes for these, but now I’m convert. They’re like thin, delicate Pringles, which you reveal slowly from a tray, like unsheathing a potato-based samurai sword. They’re completely impractical, especially when you’re on the move. You may as well try to snack on a flugelhorn. But luckily they have perforated middles so you can split your long chip and make it into two medium chips.

Honestly, they were delicious and I can never go back. From now on, I want all my crisps to be at least the length of an Olympic swimming pool and really hard to eat, so if you see Long Chips anywhere else, please let me know. I’ll bring my articulated lorry and buy the lot.

VERDICT: So long