Peeling away to 2019.

A New Year quickie. A palette cleanser. An opening salvo to a year that doesn’t look to promise very much. Don’t thank me now, you haven’t read it yet.
I know what you’re thinking. How on earth am I going to make 2019 a good year for my skin? Obviously you don’t care about my skin but you may be rather fond of your own. It must be very strange being one of those people who ‘don’t feel comfortable in their own skin’. Well, one thing I’ve noticed now that the fog of alcohol, assorted nuts, an even bigger assortment of cheese, whipped cream, top-end carbs, meat and nicotine is beginning to lift, is that all avenues of media are packed with helpful lists of things to do to make your life better in 2019. Some are better than others. Most are awful. All are f*cking obvious. How to get fitter, how to lose weight, how to be happier, how to sleep more, how to avoid stress. Basically how to become the kind of perfect vison of homo-sapia (is that right?) that Gwyneth Paltrow would like us to be. I can only imagine how rubbish it would be to live with her. Apart from the money.
Back to skin. Here’s 10 tips from health24.com on how I can keep my skin as smooth and rosy as a baby’s arse that’s just been slapped.
1. Chill out. That’s right, just relax. In fact, f*ck it, who cares about skin anyway. Sherry?
2. Give your diet a makeover. Then it says something about free radicals, a concept I’m fairly sure no-one really knows much about because they sound made up. Because they were made up, by someone with too much time on their hands and not enough money in their bank account.
3. Use sunscreen. As I sit writing this my entire body is lathered in factor 50. I have yet to notice the improvement.
4. Drink lots of water. Job done. If there’s one thing I do right it’s to drink a lot of water. Do I get a prize?
5. Remove make-up at day’s end. I make a point of meticulously removing any make up at the end of the day, but I can’t say I have ever see any real benefits. Odd.
6. Get your zzzzzz’s. Do people still use the term ‘zzzzzz’s’? I’m not 5 years old and I’m not a Mr Man character. Sleep works very well as a substitute.
7. Use moisturiser. What, on top of the factor 50? I’ll slide off my chair.
8. Get plenty of fresh air. Show me a place where the air is fresh these days and I’ll happily oblige. According to most sources (doubtless health24.com included) spending 10 minutes by a busy street is the same as smoking 2 lifetimes worth of 60 cigarettes a day and being trapped in a house fire for 12 minutes.
9. Keep up with your skin routine. Skin routine? Mmm. My skin routine is that I wake up every morning and I am in my skin and unless anything particularly foul happens to me during the day I tend to go to bed with the very same skin. I’m not sure I’d like your skin. Or yours. That would be weird. I’m not sure how well my skin routine works but I’ll stick with it for now.
10. Be patient. Yes, be patient, soon we’ll all be dead and dust and done and then we won’t need to care about skin. Hurrah.
People get paid to come up with this sh*t you know. Beyond belief. I do this for free.

Enjoy 2019.

G B Hewitt. 10.01.2019