Amazing discovery: How to accelerate the ageing process.

As if trying to finish this book hadn't already made me feel 112, today I discovered an amazing way to add decades to my age in seconds. I should preface this by saying that I've spent about £100 a year for twenty years on Clarins moisturizer in an optimistic attempt to look 26 forever. According to my calculations, that's £2,000 since 1990, give or take.  Let's make it £5,000.  And today I reversed it all in half an hour.

I know you're dying to learn my secret, so here it is: Half an hour at Topshop.

I'm not sure what I was thinking. Perhaps some deep primitive urge to explore the dark side. Perhaps it was temporary insanity.  Or perhaps the truth is simpler. Perhaps after all those months of wrestling with the muse, I forgot what the real world was really like.

Well, now i know. The real world is very frilly and short, and the colours range from a very pale unflattering taupe all the way through to a pale unflattering champagne, ending up with a kind of anaemic (yet somehow pale and unflattering) pink. Combined with black.  All of this must be worn with a hybrid joke dominatrix six-inch stiletto heel.

In case you're feeling tempted to recreate my fashion journey, may I make a suggestion? Continue on a few blocks further west to Selfridges, where they sell clothes for grown-ups. Or skip the whole thing and visit the electronics department of John Lewis.

NB: If you're under 35 or smaller than a size 10, ignore this blog entirely.