So far today I have made one important decision about my life (which I can’t talk about at the moment), and now have another, almost as important one to make.

I’m knitting my first pair of gloves. It’s going quite well, but here’s the decision issue. Ever since I stopped biting my nails, they have grown strong and straight. They’re tough little buggers and I finally had to cut them for A-Level Physics as they were too long to deal with fiddly equipment (too long being really too long, you wouldn’t want to know and I don’t have any photos so you wouldn’t believe me anyway). They’ve gone through every pair of knitted gloves I own, I’ve even cut myself with them over the years.

Juggling normally takes care of them, keeping them down to a manageable level so that I don’t have to purposefully cut them, but it seems that my juggling technique has adapted so that they’re just not getting the punishment they used to. I did a lot of juggling at the weekend and only succeeded in damaging two nails: my weak left thumb nail, and my left hand middle finger nail.

I have got to the stage of my first glove (the left one) where the thumb and fingers are being worked. I’ve done the thumb and fitted it in its current state (but left a long tail so that I can lengthen if needs be. Next is my left index finger. The nail on this finger currently extends half an inch beyond the finger. The question is how much nail to accommodate; just how long should I maintain my fingernails for optimum glove wearage?

I think I’m going to be forced to keep my nails to below a quarter of an inch of a protuberance in order to give the gloves the best chance of survival. These are the tough decisions you make in life.