I had a birthday recently, and only to the very-generous could I still be considered to be in my mid-30s. This is fine. But, perhaps more conscious of time passing in my life, I did happen to notice that the Oil of Olay moisturiser that I can basically never be bothered to use, tells me that it will fight “Seven Signs of Ageing”. But nowhere on the bottle does it say what these seven signs are. Luckily, with age comes wisdom, so below, please find the Seven Signs of Ageing, as experienced by me.
- Having a solid plan to pay off your mortgage
- Owning more than one pair of slippers
- National Trust membership
- Experiencing genuine envy over your neighbours’ hanging baskets
- Signing petitions about litter and/or traffic calming in your local area
- Buying a bread machine
- Having “a late one” – to watch Newsnight
Approaching middle age, I think I have hit all of these milestones. Particularly traumatic was realising the depth of true resentment I had towards other people’s manicured lawns and flowers. This from the city girl who deliberately bought her first flat without a garden because, “There are loads of parks and at least there someone else mows the lawn.” I have recently been known to say these days on a rainy summer day, “At least it’s good for the garden.” I hate myself.
Keen, as ever, to be your ambassador for product testing, I happily went out and bought sixty bottles of Oil of Olay for experimentation purposes, and can report that whilst perhaps it over-eggs its claims – it does indeed really cleverly fight at least one of the seven signs: it’s put my mortgage payments back by at least a month.
