Baz Luhrmann's Sunscreen: do as he says, not as I do - plus wistful thoughts on Colladeen Visage, and other sunburn remedies

Burning in progress!

The other day, in the garden of a cafe in a Birmingham suburb, I aged ten years in a single lunchtime. It was a long and lazy lunch, but that's still some fast forwarding of the natural ageing process. Not even the delicious loaf of artisan baked rye bread I took home with me could make up for the damage I had inadvertently done to myself. And all because I forgot to apply sunscreen - or rather, I had applied a moisturiser with SPF30 that morning, which on closer - and retrospective - inspection of its crimped edge, turned out to have expired last September.

I had come down to Brum with my friend Gillie, to meet our new friend Maureen, a crime writer who lives nearby. The weather was intermittently sunny and cloudy, with a light wind. When the sun came out it did feel hot on my face, but I thought I was protected...or rather, I was so engrossed in our animated and wide-ranging conversation that I didn't really think at all.

A few days later, after a brief phase of redness on my cheekbones and under-eye puffiness, I was left with a lattice of new wrinkles under each eye that weren't there before. When I used to smile, I'd just have a little pouch of fat form under each eye, while the skin below that was near enough smooth. Ironically, the photographer at my godson's wedding the other weekend remarked on this very fact. Well, sadly that is no longer the case...or not when I smile. 'So don't smile!' volunteered ex-Mr Bonkers helpfully. And to be fair I don't really feel like smiling much at the moment. I am too busy kicking myself for this latest sun-related folly, the last one being in 2001 when I fell asleep in the sun on a bench, and woke up with swollen eyelids like angry red balloons. They eventually imploded - like punctured balloons indeed - but that incident kickstarted the crepeyness of my upper eyelids that is slowly worsening over time. Oddly it doesn't bother me nearly as much as what is now going on underneath my eyes.

Me (with makeup) a year ago. My skin certainly is 'dryer' now!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this latest lapse, for I am a person with appalling 'form' for self-abuse in the sun. In the 70s, a Health & Safety-free decade, as I recall, I used to use Factor 2 sun tan lotion on my body and Factor 4 on my face. As a hedonistic teenager I would spend all day in the sun, and when I went into the exam hall to sit my university finals, the staff jokingly asked me for my passport, a rather politically incorrect reference to the deep bronze colour I had turned thanks to my al fresco revision. In the early 90s, I remember being shocked and indignant on a visit to Australia to find that Factor 8 was the lowest strength of sun cream on sale over there at the time.

And now the laugh is on me...I should have listened to Baz, I should have had Undina with me(!), urging me to keep to the shade with her. My friend Suzanne is also very sun-aware, and would surely have plonked a big floppy sunhat on my head, after ensuring I was slathered in SPF50. As it is, I am slathered in coconut oil (at her suggestion) in a bid to rehydrate the taut, dehydrated delta where the new wrinkles lurk.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2007, wear sunscreen
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists
Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
Than my own meandering experience, I will dispense this advice now"

Baz Luhrmann: Sunscreen

So yes, on to the wistful thoughts part...I recently started taking Colladeen Visage, which doesn't contain collagen, as the name might suggest, but rather a selection of collagen-boosting natural plant compounds that can supposedly 'play a protective role against the damaging effects of sunlight on skin'. The leaflet that comes with the tablets goes on to say: 'But please note: Colladeen Visage should only be used as an additional protection against sun damage. It certainly does not replace your normal sun protection regime.' Hmm, I think I should have listened to the makers of Colladeen too!

I should explain that the 'Visage' version of Colladeen differs from the regular one through the addition of lutein as well as anthocyanidins and OPCs. I know, I had to look them up too, They are bioflavonoids of some kind, basically plant extracts with antioxidant properties. Here's a link to all the different types, though I have to say it largely washes over me. The PR blurb for Colladeen Visage continues to mock and reassure the user in one deft (sun-) stroke:

"UV rays and over-exposure to the sun can be especially harmful to our skin, and it’s nice to know that there is a supplement which can help provide an internal SPF and help skin cope better with exposure to sunlight."

So I haven't half put it through its paces then!

Me, no makeup, not smiling - bags under the eyes!

Colladeen Visage does do well in consumer reviews: it got 88/100 in this survey in Good Housekeeping, for example. And I can honestly say I did feel my skin was smoother - (in a further ironic twist) particularly the under eye area - in the month or so that I had been taking it before this accident. In fact one day I woke up and the tautness of my skin actually looked as though I had had a face lift overnight! I have never seen anything like it, and though that effect kind of subsided somewhat over time, I really do think something was going on at a 'cellular level', as the dermatologists say. ;)

Me, no makeup, smiling - multiple wrinkles

(Editor's note: I promise I have other, grimmer-looking photos than these, but can't bring myself to show you in case the act of publishing them sets the wrinkles 'in stone'!)

And now it is a week and a half since that day in Brum, and I am carrying on with the Colladeen Visage, in the hope that it can mitigate the damage even after the fact, ditto the coconut oil, while also applying that Dr Organic Manuka Honey Rescue cream I mentioned in my eczema post. It is soothing and has the right amount of richness for my ultra parched skin. Finally, I have ordered some organic, cold pressed rosehip oil, which is supposed to have healing properties.

It may be too early to tell to what extent I can reverse the ill effects of that one act of thoughtlessness, though I will report back if these latest interventions seem to have helped. I think there may even have been a slight improvement since these photos were taken a few days ago, but I may be imagining it**. Meanwhile Gillie says I should be philosophical about the whole business, taking a leaf out of Buddha's book. You know, shit happens (those may not be his exact words), accept it and  move on.

Sali Hughes, my go-to beauty guru, also has timely wisdom on the matter in her book 'Pretty Honest', reminding us that the wrinkle count on our faces is still very much a first world problem:

"It's really important that you don't fall down the rabbit hole of self-scrutiny in your mature years because, truly, you will be fighting a losing battle. Each month, your face will show new evidence of the ageing process, much of it uncontrollable, and you will drive yourself crackers, like someone holding their hand over the leak in a colander. That way madness lies."

Oh, and in case I find myself in the sun again - though I shall do my best to avoid it now, despite my reckless past! - I will be slapping on my (brand new!) tube of Avene's Eau Thermale SPF50 Emulsion (see photo below)...

Hmm, going back to Baz, I think my knees - while not an attractive feature of mine as such, and once famously described by a boyfriend as 'serviceable' - are in good nick at least, and I am working on the jealousy and the flossing. ;)


Have you ever really burnt yourself and lived to regret it? Especially on a delicate area of skin?

I would love to hear about your tried and tested sunburn remedies, especially any that help reduce wrinkles caused by sun damage!


**Update

Here I am on Day 11, slathered in coconut oil, enormous hands, gormless expression, and with no makeup except lipstick. I think the oil may be helping a bit after all.

A muted mood and more make up musings, including a claggy Clarins coup, and the Leaning Tower of Travel Pots

Thumbs up, and a victory sign for 'V'!

It's been a funny start to the year what with all these stars dying, like Bowie and Alan Rickman. A friend remarked that at this rate the firmament will soon be 'starless and Bible-black'. The music business seems to be particularly life-limiting, certainly. Then another friend was wondering if Donald Trump might possibly be next, as he is also 69, but if so he would only go and take Charlotte Rampling and Roy Wood with him, which would never do. The same friend actually had a 'marital exclusion' for Alan Rickman, which she is now going to have to reassign; knowing her, it will be to Kevin Spacey, who on the face of it strikes me as an unlikely tree up which to bark. I must say I am not sure I have quite taken in the fact that Bowie is dead. I can vividly remember dancing myself into a trance to Jean Genie at school discos in about 1974. He provided the vividly eclectic, insidiously liberating bass line to my adolescence, encouraging hordes of teenagers like me to 'let yourselves go'. And now, having fallen to earth, he has quietly let himself go back up again...

Top of the Pops, 1974 ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons

So between that, some yarn colour and tension issues(!), and frustrations to do with the timing of my work projects, I have been feeling a bit subdued lately. The week didn't get off to a particularly auspicious start either: the kitten has another tummy upset, and also managed to topple an eight foot palm on Monday morning, spraying earth all over a freshly hoovered pale carpet. But then a neighbour popped round and mentioned that her daughter has just had an op to stop her brain leaking out down her nose, which rather put things in perspective.

I swear I will pick up the threads of perfume presently, but there is something about the New Year that prompts me to experiment with - and organise - my make up and skincare collections, and there were a few noteworthy developments(!) recently that I thought I'd consign to screen before getting back on topic, as far as I ever do.

A claggy Clarins coup

A wonder, but far from perfect! ~ Source: eBay

For a while now I have had a make up albatross in my possession, to wit a Clarins Wonder Perfect mascara a friend gave me for my birthday - I think this year, but it could well be older. I have only used it half a dozen times, because from the off it was extremely claggy and thick, so much so that the black gunk - we could perhaps even call it 'clag', by analogy with 'slag' - actually oozed out from under the cap. Eventually, my annoyance at the poor performance of this high end cosmetics item prompted me to take the mascara back to Boots - not with any hope of replacing it, as I had no receipt and couldn't rightly recall how long I had had it - but just to draw their attention to its messy malfunctioning in a mildly irritated yet calm manner. Imagine my surprise when the SA offered to replace the wayward wand with a different model (Be Long) on the spot. So Long, Be Claggy! What excellent customer service, I thought to myself, as it would have been quite cathartic just to have vented. And the SA did so despite my blurting out the rather insensitive kicker that a £1 mascara from Poundland was better behaved.

Eking out recalcitrant serum

The other day, I finally reached the bottom of my Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye serum. Well, I unscrewed the top and saw that there was in fact a little smidge left at the bottom that the pump would not manage to extract. So, using that tried and tested 'getting the last bit of tinned tomato out of the can' technique, I filled the bottom with warm water and swilled it around to form a slightly serum-y liquid, which I used up over the course of the next three nights - rather haphazardly it must be said - tipping some into my hand and quickly slapping it on my cheeks, a bit like a facial oil but one that is prone to falling off again immediately. Ah well, I think some of the liquid may have stuck to its target, and I had that deep sense of satisfaction that nothing was wasted.

Getting the 'tail end' out of the bottle!

The Leaning Tower of Travel Pots

I have already had a good moan here about the friable nature of these stacks of travel pots used for storing creams and lotions. I buy yet another set - from Boots or Muji or whomever - and before you can say 'built-in product obsolescence' another bit of plastic rim has sheared off. It's simply going to happen, so you may as well accept that it is an endemic design flaw with this particular product. Here's my current tower, with a Clarins foundation on the top storey, and goodness only knows what elsewhere. Some combination of Liz Earle cleanser, hair texturising clay, night cream and/or Olay serum. All 'leaning' to white in colour, and hence deeply confusing.

A novel take on 'washing my eyelids'

Now you may be thinking I have been under a rock for the past twenty years - or since whenever I was first allowed to wear makeup, which is more like forty - but I have only just twigged to the whole purpose of those paler colours in eyeshadow palettes - you know, the vaguely biscuit coloured ones, or even more bizarre on the face of it, the near white shades! In this Pretty Honest book Sali Hughes says that in your Desert Island make up bag you only really need a universally flattering brown eye shadow, and a sort of ivory one, to act as a 'wash' over the lids and a bit up into the socket. I have steered completely clear historically of the paler end of the palette, thinking a) I have no discernible eye sockets and b) anything that white will make me look like a ghoul.

A bit faint, but it did look okay, really!

Then the other day I had a play with a combination of the palest colour in this HD Brows palette that Tara of A Bottled Rose kindly gave me, over the eyelid and a bit higher up as I understand you are meant to do - though it still might be stretching the truth - and the skin! - to call it a socket in my case, followed by the darkest colour (Truffle!) just on the lids bit. And it really did work rather well - not ghostly, but it softened the Truffle shade and made it more graduated on the eyelid, with less of a stark demarcation between eyeshadow and not. And I know that is going to sound an utterly ridiculous kind of discovery to any makeup aficionados out there, but it just goes to show that you can go decades in complete ignorance of a quite fundamental technique in one's beauty MO. Oh, and being on a bit of a roll I also bought my first standalone eyeshadow brush this week(!), as I had also just learnt that a brush is so much nicer than those sponge-tipped apologies for applicators I have only used all my life, hehe.

'Bare' to the left and 'Truffle' to the right!

A bath hat lightbulb moment

Speaking of washing, this next discovery is even more laughable - and reprehensible - than the one about 'washes' of pale colour on eyelids. You see for years and years I have not properly attended to my forehead. Not in terms of moisturising, for sure. And even my washing of it has been a bit haphazard, and tending to coincide with hair washing days. Which in fairness is quite often. All because of my fringe, you see, which would get either greasy or wet or both at the drop of a hat. But the other night it dawned on me that if I actually wore a hat I could have easy access to my forehead without my hair getting in the way. There's always a plastic bath hat swiped from a hotel to hand, so I promptly put it on and proceeded to involve my whole face in my skincare routine. I wouldn't sleep in a bath hat, mind, so you still have the problem of how to apply night cream or facial oil without getting it in the fringe. I guess you could wait till it had soaked in, but life's too short for that, and I am usually eager to get off to bed by that point. So there is still some figuring out to do...

Have you made any completely basic and obvious skincare or makeup discoveries late in life? 

Or do you have any ablution aberrations or other unhygienic habits to mention?

No obligation to 'fess up to either, as long as don't make me feel any more foolish and ashamed than I  already do for mine. ;)

Super Facialist Una Brennan Rose Hydrate Peaceful Skin Night Cream and The Body Shop Vitamin E Nourishing Night Cream: you hunt for ages for one Holy Grail, pampering, non-stinging night cream you can put round your eyes, then two come along at once!

Greece, 1990, after a hard day's unprotected sunbathing

Given that it is still just into the New Year, I thought I would allow myself one skincare post before carrying on with the normal fare on Bonkers. Especially as my 2am googling of night creams has since borne promising fruit. Although I have arguably added mm to my crow's feet and several shades to my under-eye dark shadows by being up that late in the first place.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been searching for ages for a night cream that is within my budget (ideally under £15 in my head), suitable for oily skin and for layering over nocturnally applied serums - should that be sera? - that also feels luxurious and pampering, thick but not too cloying, and which would also crucially be safe for use on the delicate eye area.

I should perhaps backtrack and explain that my eye area has been woefully neglected most of my adult life. Till last Christmas to be exact, by which time I was already 55, and - as I have remarked before - the skincare stable door was firmly closed and the collagen long since bolted. To give you a bit of background (and please feel free to skip this next bit if you know it already), when I was young I was a real sun worshipper - I was actually asked for my passport when taking  my finals, albeit in rather un-pc jest. I wore Factor 2 at best till I was about 33, and only switched up to a staggeringly sun-obliterating Factor 8, as it seemed to me, because I was going to Australia for a month, and that was the lowest factor on sale over there.

I should also 'fess up that I didn't moisturise at all till I was in my 40s, mainly because my lodger had told me that L'Oreal cream was made from minced deer's hoohahs, but also because night creams used to migrate into your eyes in those days and sting like hell. I genuinely think that the products themselves have improved no end since the start of what should have been the formative years of my skincare regime, which of course they flagrantly weren't. So there was all of that...and then to add insult to injury, I fell asleep in the sun when I was 41 and both eyelids promptly ballooned and went bright red and twice as angry. If ex-Mr Bonkers hadn't inquired whether I wanted a cup of tea at one point they might well have exploded. And from that day forward I never put my face in the sun again, and took tentative steps towards wearing some kind of moisturiser, some of the time. On some of my face. But it was only last Christmas, as I say, that I really got a complete skincare regime together, which is now pretty much set. Happy to do a post on that some time if it would be of interest to anyone, but it is such a personal / variable thing I assumed it wouldn't, while the products I am featuring here have more general relevance.

1977, and a rare occasion of not exposing maximum skin to sun 

So, if failing to look after your delicate eye area were a criminal offence, I would surely be sentenced to life without parole - and with my meagre prison earnings I would barely be able to scrape enough funds together to buy a pocket tub of Astral to offset the creeping crepey-ness around my eyes, and other assorted ravages of time.

Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure I can reveal that a pocket tub of Astral was what I was using as my 'comfort layer' at night up until now, following the advice that if you apply serum as well, the main role of a night cream is to soothe and moisturise rather than to deliver extra anti-ageing benefits, though it may do that too. And you can even add a few drops of a facial oil to your moisturiser - thus it was that I occasionally sexed up the Astral with a sample of REN rose oil to give it a more high end scent at least. But Astral, allegedly the go-to emollient of Joanna Lumley, and which certainly seems to have served her well if that is all she's been using ;), is a bit rich for my liking, and has a slightly disconcerting smell of lanolin. I have just checked and it also has 'lanolin alcohol', whatever that is. Who knew that sheep came with integral stills! Anyway, my reading on the beauty blogs suggests that alcohol is not a great thing to put on even the oiliest of skins, so it was probably time to move on...

And it didn't take me long to identify two creams that  seemed to fit the bill - one in a Guardian article by beauty wonder guru Sali Hughes, and one I don't rightly remember where, but a beauty blog or news organ of some repute. And as you may have inferred from the title, these are firstly:

Super Facialist Una Brennan Rose Hydrate Peaceful Skin Night Cream (normally £16.99 but I got it on the Boots website for £9.99!)

I was drawn to the Super Facialist cream, which I have no idea how best to abbreviate though it desperately needs contracting!, firstly by the fact that it was created by a skincare expert - albeit a rather elusive one - secondly by the inclusion of a rose scent, which is very natural and realistic, and thirdly by the reference to 'peaceful skin'. Who wouldn't want their skin to be at peace, even if the rest of me struggles to sleep past 5am because of the kitten pummelling my head. Plus my skin really deserves to be at peace after 40 years of such sustained self-abuse.

The feel on my skin of the Super Facialist cream is luxurious, yet light and 'moist'. It smells quite lovely - the rose scent has that faintly metallic twang reminiscent of niche perfumes showcasing the note. It also leaves my skin very soft - the sort of sensation you would expect from a much more expensive product. And crucially I can put it on my eyes, which helps my whole (slightly hooded) upper eye area feel a little less taut and stretched when I wake up.
 

Oh, this may be one article where I read about the cream, and it mentions the inclusion of hyaluronic acid, rosehip, cucumber and willow, which together are good for hydration and elasticity. The anti-ageing ingredients are a bonus, as I say, given that I mainly rely on serums for that aspect of my nocturnal regime.

Caroline Hirons rates the Super Facialist line generally too, I see, and suspects the brand is some kind of a joint venture with Boots, limiting its appeal to UK-based readers, unfortunately. She describes it as a 'good priced range, and the products are for the most part, good'. And like my friend Gillie in the last post, Caroline Hirons is also not given to insincere blandishments. ;)

Then I also bought this, on the basis that I might get lucky with one out of the two, yet I like it just as much!:

The Body Shop Vitamin E Nourishing Night Cream (£13, and Sali Hughes' top budget recommendation)

Sali Hughes calls this one 'pampering and gently moisturising' and I would agree with that. The texture is denser and the colour faintly pink tinged - unless that is just the reflection off the label - with a subtle and delicate scent that I really like, and predictably couldn't possibly describe. Sali recommends it for 'all but oily skins', and I'd say it is not too rich at all for me. I guess my skin type could best be summed up as:

Combination / acne-prone / dehydrated / mature - and sometimes sensitive!

And though it might not seem that I conducted much research before lighting on these night creams, I have certainly tried and rejected a ton of such products in the past, including all sorts of less well known brands you find in T K Maxx, like Lange and Dr Lewinn, as well as the usual sub-£10 drugstore suspects from Nivea, Garnier, Boots, Aldi et al. Now I did nearly spring for the Olay Regenerist All Night Recovery Cream @ £21 odd, on the basis that I love the Olay Regenerist Daily Regenerist Serum, which I get for less than a tenner by buying bottles with Greek writing on them off Amazon. The associated night cream was also highly rated by Sali Hughes in the same article as The Body Shop one. But most of the many night creams I have tried had an annoyingly cheap / pungent scent, or were too expensive, or felt too rich or sticky or got into my eyes and stung. Which is of course precisely why I didn't wear night cream all those years...

And I have now finally decoded 'avoid contact with eye area', which may have unwittingly put me off a bunch of other possible contenders, because both the above products do in fact urge you to do this. I have decided that they are merely covering their backs, because if anyone's eye area is delicate it would be mine, and trust me when I say that these creams are extremely benign. So what the manufacturers must really mean is 'don't go sticking this in your eye per se', which is an altogether different matter, presupposing high levels of clumsiness and/or very big fingers. The creams certainly don't wander in there of their own accord.

So I would be interested to learn from readers of any more benign night cream recs you might have, ideally in the sub-£15 range (or $21.59 for readers Stateside ;) ). Therein lies the challenge I sense...