Sunday, February 1, 2009

Facing up to getting older


I will be forty four in a few days. Forty four! What happened? One moment I was forty and now I'm forty four.

This officially makes me middle aged but I find it hard to accept this. I really don't feel middle aged, except when I realise that one of my young colleagues could be my son or daughter. Or I have I register for something on the computer and scroll for half an hour to find the year of my birth! However there is one place where I've given in to being middle aged - the dressing table.

Yes, my dressing table is a sad indictment of the ageing process. Here I keep my Simple Anti-Ageing Facewash, No 7 Refine and Rewind anti-ageing beauty serum (I've upgraded to this from Protect and Perfect, dubbed Protect and Survive by my friend and me) and Aldi's Anti-Wrinkle day cream (very cheap and reckoned by gays and beauty editors - say no more). Every day I slough off my dead skin and rub these many unguents into my skin, in the hope that they will stave off the effects of ageing.

Occasionally I try to convince my facial muscles to stay in place by doing some face exercises I saw once on the TV. These involve lots of gurning and puffing out your cheeks so that you look like a bullfrog with an overactive thyroid gland. These exercises apparently will keep you looking youthful and taut, if you can be bothered to do them that is.

Somebody gave me a very expensive cream recently which contains a substance called Synake, made from the venom of a temple snake. I was extremely fortunate to be given this cream as it's a premium product sold to rich people in Selfridges. But somehow I found the idea of rubbing snake venom into my face problematic and also I doubted it's efficacy and the science behind it.

Ultimately it's down to your genes. My grandmother had beautifully soft skin even in her 90s and all she used was a spot of Nivea and a bit of powder. She drank a little bit of sherry now and then, lots of tea but mostly I think her face was being held up by her Welsh high cheekbones. I'm not too keen on sherry but I have inherited her bone structure, so my only hope is that they will provide me with some sort of scaffolding for my face as it becomes more and more wrinkly. Unless Aldi come up with something in the meantime of course.

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