My left ear hole

As my regulars know, I’m 37. And a half. Normally the reality of careening towards the end of my thirties like a greased up luge victim travelling faster than the speed of light really doesn’t worry me too much.

However, at my age, I thought I was long past the stage of getting pimples. I’m getting wrinkles instead: crows’ feet, laugh lines, frown furrows and even the marks made by my face scrunched up on the pillow take hours to disappear. Therefore it's extremely frustrating to wake up one morning - with a visage that will take until lunchtime to fully unfold – and see a zit on my neck; another hiding in an eyebrow and a mini-Mars gravitated on the flap of skin/cartilage by my left ear hole.

OK, so they may not be on my nose, chin or cheeks but with my fluorescent skin they stand out like angry red texta squiggles on a whiteboard. I mean come on….! It’s hard enough dealing with ageing without also having to endure the indignity of pimples as well.

Surely my posh Ella Bache ‘Purifying Emulsion for oily, sensitive skin’ (at $69 – Love Chunks will kill me) should be able to keep both wrinkles and pimples at bay? Just to be sure, I checked through the list of ingredients. In order of quantity, they are:
Water
PEG-8 Beeswax
Octyldodecyl Myristate
Caprylic Triglyceride
Cyclomethicone
Glyceryl stearate
PEG-100 stearate
Propylene Glycol
Tomato extract
Butcherbroom extract
Hydroxyethylcellulose
Carbomer
Triethanolamine
Methylparaben
Propylparaben
o-Cymen-5-ol
Trisodium EDTA
FD&C Red 4
D&C Red 33
FD&C Yellow 6
Fragrance

(Affecting crazed, Jim Carrey-like) smile: Well isn’t that nice. Don’t they sound all-natural and enticing! No wonder my skin is confused about being either a spotty adolescent or a particularly sprightly pensioner – it’s trying to deal with tomatoes, wax and something called o-Cymen-5-ol. Have you ever heard of anything called ‘o-Cymen-5-ol’? Me either, yet I’m willingly rubbing it onto my face…..

And for future reference, the exclamation ‘Crikey!’ isn’t just the sole property of fellow Aussie Steve Irwin. Forget the potential chemical cocktails or carcinogenic concerns of the emulsion and let’s focus on the money. This stuff cost me sixty nine hard earned Aussie dollars (about $10 bucks American, or one English pound) for what - a gloop of water and beeswax? Perhaps I should just go back to the sorbolene that ‘Ned’s Crazy Bargain Store’ sells for $2 per half-litre. If it feels too sticky, I could keep my eyes open for whatever slippery unguent is cheapest at Coles.

All this was tumbling around and around in my brain as I drove into work and gleefully found the well-hidden free car-parking spot this morning. ‘Free’ means that the ‘three hour parking ONLY between 8am and 6pm’ sign has been flogged, leaving just an empty pole. There’s six of us in a row that are willing to risk it and challenge any parking tickets that have yet to materialise.

Anyhow, I was feeling OKish. Still not thrilled about the face – Wrinkles and Zits give me the Sh---- sure-fire excuse for a blog; but OK enough. Until a fierce, cruel autumnal gust of wind swept through the gum trees, across the carpark and ……….straight up my skirt.

Of course I would be wearing a floaty, three-tiered peasanty skirt today wouldn’t I. Generous volumes of material and lace edging that so very easily enabled the breeze to blow it right over my head. At least it momentarily covered my face and my look of sheer horror and humiliation. Unfortunately it didn’t muffle my ears and so I heard a huge guffaw from the fat guy delivering a tray of focaccias to the Italian restaurant behind me. A sixty-something admin lady walked past me as quickly as she could; her eyes downcast but her mouth pressed shut in a grim line – clearly trying not to piss herself at my misfortune.

Actually on further thought, there was a bright side – my wrinkles and zits were hidden.