A Post-Election and Pre-Christmas Potpourri Post: Watching the Clock, and a Couple of Skincare Epiphanies

Just to reassure you, this post will not be about actual potpourri, notwithstanding the fact that potpourri is scented. It really was 'a thing' years ago, wasn't it? - round about the time of those excessively ruched Austrian blinds, or maybe later still- and no home was complete at Christmas without some kind of petal / pine cone / random bit of stick combo in a bowl. Some of these mixes smelt truly overpowering, till the scent wore off eventually. I do in fact put out a non-scented collection of baubles interspersed with some bendy stick garnish, but whatever it is, potpourri is not the name for it.

But no, I meant the word in its metaphorical sense, as a 'mixed bag'. And to be clear, this post is not about the election either, though I will just reproduce my Facebook post on polling from yesterday, for anyone not my friend on there:

'At the polling station this morning I asked the woman on the door if I could have two votes for the price of one for turning up before midday. "Only I think I may need two." "No, sorry", she said. Asked the same question of the two women officiating at the desk, and received the same answer. One vote per person, no BOGOF or "bottomless" votes to be had at all, even though it was just turned ten."Okay then", I said, "I may just come back later in a different coat."'

What I didn't mention on Facebook was that after voting, I popped to the bakery at the hospital, to buy two of their famously creamy doughnuts for my ex's mum (aka my Elderly Friend) and me to have after taking her to a different hospital for an eye test. You have to get there early to catch them - though as you will infer from the above it was barely mid-morning. I inquired of the girl serving:

"You will still have these after the election, won't you?"
"I do hope so", she replied.

You see, they have closed our night time A & E service at Stafford, and there is a fair bit of hanging around on trolleys in corridors before being seen to, as I can testify myself, but to lose the doughnuts would be too awful to contemplate. So that is the political part of the post over.

Watching the clock

On the 30th November, my blog finally clocked up its two millionth page view. I was busy selling my knitted wares at a craft fair at the time, but was keen not to miss this major event, having not long since failed to watch the odometer on my car cycle through 20,000 miles, with its pleasing string of noughts. I started looking at the blog on my phone every few minutes once there were only about 80 page views to go, and when the clock hit 1,999,999 I was all ready to screenshot the magic number about to appear. Unfortunately, there was a small flurry of readers at that very moment - including a well-meaning friend sitting beside me who went onto Bonkers specifically to give me that final view I needed ;) - for when I refreshed the home page, the counter had leapt to 2,000,002(!). The number being palindromic is a small comfort at least. The previous evening, worried that there might have been a sudden and inexplicable wave of readers nudging the number closer to the target, due to a school project in Norway, for example, or a random mention of the blog in the Romanian equivalent of Mumsnet - for stranger things do happen to cause a sudden spike in traffic - I had entrusted a friend in Massachusetts with the task of keeping an eye on my tally during his evening, thereby adding a good five hours to our 'observation window'. As things turned out, the 2m mark happened on my watch, but he has kindly Photoshopped it after the fact to the desired figure!

Click on the image to reveal the noughts!

Skincare epiphanies - Jam today

A long time ago I wrote a post about those deeply annoying stackable plastic pots you can put travel-sized portions of toiletries in. I say annoying, because the thread on the screwable base of each pot starts to shear off and the blasted tower disintegrates soon after purchase, often with disastrous results in your sponge bag, depending on what you had put in them. The post in question arguably has one of my best titles on Bonkers: 'A slam dunk gunkfest: snap-prone stack pots'.

Then I was just washing up a mini pot of Bonne Maman jam with a view to chucking it in the recycling when it dawned on me that it would make a much more secure individual travel pot for no outlay. Plus I could 'be more Greta' at a stroke. You can buy the individual ones in a more sturdy plastic and with a white lid, but they cost about three quid each. I felt properly Blue Peterish repurposing jam receptacles! Now I just need to eat A Lot More Jam in order to accumulate enough pots for my many and various unguents. Being glass, they will be more weighty than the stack pots, admittedly, but the risk of disaster should be negligible by comparison.

Skincare epiphanies - Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel Moisturiser

My morning routine used to involve an Olay serum*, which I have talked about on the blog before, and which I would put on before my Paula's Choice Resist tinted moisturiser**. Oh yes, and funnily enough, the serum is mentioned in a post in which I lament malfunctioning beauty products of all kinds, including our very travel pots!

I am on about my tenth? bottle of the Olay serum, and remain a big fan, but then along came this Neutrogena moisturiser - or rather I suddenly became aware of it, as it was already 'along' - and for sheer hydrating staying power, it tops the serum. It is to a chance watching last April of a Caroline Hirons TV review on This Morning that I owe this discovery. The stuff is nothing short of amazing, on account of its extreme moisture retention. It is a creamy gel-like consistency, and though it looks like goop on your fingers, dries without stickiness, and it is just as easy to apply my tinted moisturiser over it as was the case with the Olay. I honestly think it has softened my morning wrinkles and eye bags since I started using it in May, though it might be a combination of that and regular use of coconut oil at night. Also, I was buying the Neutrogena moisturiser from Boots for about £12.99, but do shop around as there are some great offers at Tesco or on Amazon.

[NB I have no personal connection with Caroline Hirons, other than the rather offbeat fact that she once lambasted me on Louise Woollam's Facebook wall for confessing to repeatedly microwaving my tea.]

*Full name = Olay Regenerist Daily Regenerating Serum
**Full name = Paula's Choice Resist Super-Light Daily Wrinkle Defense SPF30

Finally, here is the palindromic number, specially for Undina! (As before, click on the photo to see the numbers properly.)

Quick (and slow!) skincare fixes: Part 1 - squaring dark circles and my acne 'hack'

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Topic(al) advisory - readers with perfect skin may wish to skip this post - something more conventionally scented will be along presently...;)

Now they do say that the eyes are the window of the soul. Well, that's as maybe, but chronic skin issues as well as sudden onset dermatological disasters (and I am no stranger to both!) can trigger a dark night of the soul in even the most mentally resilient person.

Squaring dark circles

I have been lucky up till now to have dodged problems such as bags or dark shadows under my eyes. It has all been kicking off lately in the upper eyelid area, mind you(!), but I will save that particular 'rag bag' of bother and doom for Part 2.

Then just recently I noticed dark circles appearing under my eyes for the first time. Having googled them - as you do! - I was pleased to learn that none of the myriad probable causes were fatal, as is of course the way of even the most minor of ailments on the morbidly inclined Interwebs.

But pretty much all of the reasons I found could have applied to me, barring eczema and being a 'person of colour', people of colour apparently being a little more prone to 'periorbital hyperpigmentation'. Yes, I could take my pick really from allergies (like hay fever, which I now have!), fatigue, rubbing or scratching my eyes - me and Truffle both - sun exposure (where do I start?), contact dermatitis (see Part 2!), and loss of fat and collagen due to age (which is rampant pretty much everywhere except my skull, knuckles, and Achilles tendons).

NB Only turn upside down for brief photo opportunities!

The problem was, though, that I noticed the dark shadows right before the gig in Preston documented here. That was one of the 'dermatological disasters' to which I obliquely allude in that post. And even though gigs are by definition held at night, I am sufficiently vain to not even want to run the risk of someone spotting my dark circles in the near pitch darkness of the beer garden. So instead of having a pre-gig lie down, as is my wont, I legged it to Debenhams in the pouring rain. Well, after a quick two minutes spent googling 'Sali Hughes best thing dark shadows' and seeing what that fetched up.

The answer is a ringing endorsement of Clarins Instant Concealer. I went for shade No 2, which is actually quite pale compared to the 110 Honey foundation of theirs that I also use, but seemingly that is the whole thing with concealer ie that you need it to be lighter in order to conceal the offending darkness. (I am a bit slow on the uptake, I know. ;) ) Then  in order to qualify for four free items of skincare and cosmetics worth about £50 in total, I was persuaded to spring for another product from the Clarins range, which had to be skincare. I went with a make up remover which will feature in my upper eyelid tale of woe, so I shan't do a spoiler on that here...

The lady at the Clarins counter applied a tiny blob of the concealer either side of my nose in small, patting movements, gradually building up coverage. You really don't need much, so caution is advised when squeezing the tube, especially in hot weather, as it seems to be bursting to come out of the nozzle! (I am in fact planning a separate post on tube-related issues.)

This way up at all times!

For anyone who would like a budget alternative to the Clarins concealer, Laura Davis of The Independent singles out Bourjois Healthy Mix concealer in this article as her top pick for the under-eye area. And would you believe, I had a similar pre-gig dark shadow incident some weeks later, and of course I had forgotten to bring my newly acquired Clarins remedy (makes a change from my usual hair gunk crisis!), so instead had recourse to a couple of testers in a big branch of Boots. I would have gladly bought a tube as back up, but they had run out of my shades except in tester form. There were at least two (one pale, one medium) that did a very decent job at only £7.99 a pop compared with £21 for the Clarins.

My acne 'hack'

Full disclosure - I have suffered from acne continuously for 43 years. A GP once described me, with perhaps a little more candour than was indicated, as, technically speaking - from a hormonal perspective - 60% man. Another breezily remarked that in my case, puberty might well segue seamlessly into the menopause and beyond. And blow me, but he was right too. I don't know what percentage of the population experience uninterrupted skin eruptions well into middle age, but I know that acne in adults, especially women, is more common than you might think. Spots tend to be confined to the jawline and chin in adulthood at least - when I was 18 I had them all over my face - topping out at 64 in total during the 'acme' of my acne, as it were. It is hard for non-sufferers to imagine the extent of pain and discomfort involved, not to mention the blow to one's self-confidence - even now, it isn't easy to socialise when I get major breakouts, as for one thing having acne seems downright incongruous at this time of life.

One unexpected upside of my problem skin was the fact that it turned out to be my passport to a year spent as a teaching 'assistante' in a school on the Riviera. At an interview to decide whereabouts in France I was to be deployed, I had a chance to defend my top choice of the Cote d'Azur. I think my reason surprised the judging panel, for instead of mentioning the usual suspects of a chance to 'swan about on yachts' or 'go celeb spotting at the Cannes Film Festival', I piped up: 'The sun will be good for my acne', and that was that.

As you can see, I did manage some yacht-swanning after all!

Now in my 40+ zit busting years, I wouldn't say I have tested every single remedy out there - I shied away from Roaccutane, for instance, the heavy artillery of acne treatment, though it was offered - and I also didn't try the specialist range of skincare by Proactiv, with which some people reportedly get good results. Over that time, however, I did try umpteen formulations of the contraceptive pill, of which Dianette was the (relative!) gold standard for the condition, as well as umpteen kinds of antibiotic, Dalacin T (a salicylic acid preparation in roll-on form), benzoyl chloride in various strengths, witch hazel, tea tree oil, all manner of toners and cleansers and astringent gels from Guerlain to Clearasil and everything in between - plus a weird calamine lotion that dried like white plaster on my face, such that I had to stay home for three days.  Luckily I was revising for my A-Levels at the time. Oh, and following an overnight explosion of some 30 pustules(!) the day the Pope died in 2005, I managed to secure an emergency appointment with a German pharmacist, who - using only an enormous encyclopaedia and a winning smile - knocked up a wonder blend of two antibiotics in cream form, that had the rash subdued within a week or so. Meanwhile, I kept my back to the window in meetings at all times, and cupped my erupting chin pensively in my hand.

Then lately I would say I have had a few breakthroughs - and fewer breakouts - and my current regime is working pretty well. I still get spots - why, only yesterday I found a whitehead in the middle of my cheek, which was most irregular! - but they do feel more under control. I cannot say that anything that works for me will necessarily do the biz for you, as everyone is different, but I can certainly recommend giving some of these things a go. And no, I am not happy about being on antibiotics, but they still really seem to work, as I discovered to my cost when I went cold turkey for two months a few years ago.

My acne armoury:

Oxytetracycline - 250mg x 2 once daily (have got down to half the daily dose at least!)

Nature's Best Acidophilus Extra 4 or 10 Billion - (just take a lot of the beggars, basically, and it does pay to go for a decent brand,  I have no idea if probiotics are any good for acne in themselves, but I feel it is important to offset the damage being wreaked to my 'microbiome' by the antibiotics!)

Nature's Best High Strength Fish Oil - 1 capsule of 1100mg a day, though you can take up to 3. It is specifically since starting on the fish oil - I found a bit of science on it here - that I have been able to knock back the antibiotics. The fish oil supposedly has anti-inflammatory properties, which I can well believe.

La Roche-Posay Effaclar Astringent Lotion Micro-Exfoliant - it contains salicylic acid which is good for tackling spots, albeit its alcohol-based formula isn't ideal. For though it may seem counter-intuitive, drying the skin out too much with alcohol-containing lotions stimulates it to produce more sebum, whereupon you get locked into a sort of vicious cycle of oily secretions. ;)

La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo - the best spot zapping gel I know, and goodness knows I've tried a few!

La Roche-Posay Serozinc - an aerosol spray containing zinc, which is good for calming angry complexions. Thanks to Louise Woollam of Get Lippie for the tip off.

Artnaturals Jojoba Oil - I use this at night to counteract any over-drying from the astringent lotion above. It felt very strange putting oil on my oily skin, but I genuinely think it is helping my overall skin condition, and since this...er...lubricious epiphany(!) I truly haven't looked back. ;)

PS I have historically squeezed and picked my spots - hey, it is one of the few pleasures associated with the whole wretched business! - but luckily my bad behaviour has not led to significant scarring - well, aside from a permanently discoloured area on my chin, maybe. I do, however, have quite a few brown spots on my cheeks that are doubtless due to the combination of antibiotics and/or Dianette AND sun exposure down the years. But for longest time - rightly or wrongly - I thought the drying effects of the sun would be good for my skin, and even now I am a big believer in the morale-boosting benefits of sunshine, enjoyed in moderation, with appropriate sunscreen applied!

PPS I have never tried excluding dairy from my diet, but if anyone thinks this might really help, I'd consider giving it a go.


Do you suffer from either dark circles under your eyes or acne (anywhere?!) 

If so, I would be most interested in learning any good fixes you have come up with - whether instant or longer term...