Gill South plays a Remuera lady for a day, getting herself an anti-ageing facial at Lucy & the Powder Room.
I've never really been keen on fighting the onset of ageing terribly actively. I'm rather into lying down and letting it happen. I'm sitting outside Lucy & The Powder room in Newmarket feeling like a Remuera lady, frantically doing an interview on my mobile before going in. I'm sandwiched between tasteful Audis. Oh yes, I come here all the time.
I'm slightly nervous about my Osmosis Mini-Medi Treatment - the whole blackhead squeezing thing about facials is a real turn off for me. I've never gotten over having the mother of all pimples on my wedding day because I had a facial a couple of days before. No one warned me!
But, to my relief, squeezing blackheads is not part of the treatment today. This is all about feeding the skin and getting deep below the surface to do cell repair, says my therapist Bridgette. The Osmosis range, developed with completely natural ingredients, focuses on deep penetration to deliver nutrients to the skin's dermis layer. With Osmosis, you use "transformation" serums rather than moisturisers and the regime encourages gentle cleansing over intensive exfoliation. The range is targeted at women fighting the battle of anti-ageing.
I've never really been keen on fighting the onset of ageing terribly actively. I'm rather into lying down and letting it happen. I lived in Britain and the States from the ages of 22 to 38 so I think my skin has benefited from that. I try not to think about the good-time lifestyle I had in London and the pollution I lived with there.
I am interested in what this range can do for the pigmentation discolouration I have on my nose which appeared with my second pregnancy and never went away, the blighter. It's never bothered me because my glasses cover the bulk of it but it's not welcome on my nose and I'd like it to go.
A week later, I can assure the creator of the Osmosis range, Dr Ben Johnson that his products did not make my skin break out. It drank everything up and I was shiny and healthy at the end of it. Dr Johnson, a GP who developed the Cosmetix range a few years ago, is a clean-cut, fit-looking American who lives in Colorado. His Osmosis range is sold in medical practices and in spas, he tells me.
The American is refreshingly against exfoliating your skin and using toners, which I love because I've always been too lazy to use them. Exfoliating makes your skin more sensitive - your face should not have acids on it, so don't use alcohol toner, he tells me. What foresight I've had all these years avoiding exfoliating. Dr Johnson is anti-botox, too - gosh, is he sure he is American?
He is very excited about "a huge breakthrough" called "zinc finger technology" which he says will repair DNA damage among other things. He urges me to use his product, Catalyst, which, with consistent use, will allegedly lighten pigmentation, reduce visible capillaries and, to me, the best selling point, it makes your eyelashes grow - I love that. Another Osmosis product, StemFactor, which has 150 different skin growth factors - why stop at 150 I ask - should reduce ageing by around 10 per cent, Dr Johnson reckons.
I promise to give these products a bash and report back in a couple of months time. Frankly I'm resigned to wrinkles, though my game plan is to eat more as I get older, I figure the fatter you are, the fewer wrinkles you'll have.
Next week:
My dreams lately have been pretty full on, leaving me feeling exhausted when I wake up in the morning. I've always been curious about dreams and what they mean, so I'm off to see psychotherapist and dream interpreter Margaret Bowater for some help.
