How to get rid of wrinkles - this works!

I have wrinkles.  Not those tiny fine things only visible under a 10x magnifying glass with the aid of a 1KW dentist lamp, but the real McCoy.  Two things conspired to bring this unwelcome reality home yesterday.

A little bit of historical and somewhat hysterical perspective is needed in order to understand this all.  So bear with me.  When I first attended an optician in N Ireland in my forties he did all the usual tests.  One included looking at a display that looked remarkably like graph paper.  To me it looked crooked in places as if bent by undulating hills.  This observation concerned the optician, I could tell.  He peered into the back of my eye with his little torch and told me to look up and sideways.  There was something wrong he told me.  Several tests later he showed me a picture of the back of my eye and there was an ominous black spot in the middle of each.  He made an appointment for me to see a consultant at the local hospital as I had it seemed macular degeneracy.  It was scary to be told this, as I already knew how quickly this disease could take away your eyesight.  I left the opticians needing not one set of glasses but two.  One for reading and one for far away and in my head the worrying thought that my eyesight could get a great deal worse than it already was.  Fortunately, the specialist, after much examination, said I had something else.  I have something that looks scarily like macular degeneracy but for some reason does not progress as fast.  That black circle in each eye has remained roughly the same over the past fifteen years.  Each year at the routine eye test every optician, it is never the same one, looks worried and informs me the bad news that I have macular degeneracy and I comfort each of them immediately with

“It’s okay, it just looks like that but it isn’t!”

After several years the opticians took on a new assistant.  He was French and young with eight leather bangles on his arm.  I was used to the young female assistants who when you put on a set of frames and asked their opinion would chew on their finger nails and shrug their disinterest.  This young Frenchman was completely different.  I chose one set of round frames and turned to him and he inspected me and then said in a lovely French accent,

“This makes your face look ‘grosser’,fatter!”

I hastily took the offensive frames off and hesitantly picked up another set completely different in design, very modern. Again, he paused and really looked at me.  It was quite disconcerting.  He said,

“These make your face look long like ‘cheval’, you know like a horse.”

This time I practically threw the frames back on the shelf.  I felt very nervous about making my next choice.  Goodness knows what he might say.  I don’t have a lot of confidence about my looks at the best of time, so this whole business was really crushing.  I reluctantly, picked one at random, I remember it was a bright violet.  What on earth was I thinking?  The truth was, I was panicking.

He held his chin with his hand and then spoke,

“This one makes you look clever…but ugly.”

By now I was incapable of choosing another pair of glasses.  I could not stand one more insult or there would be tears.  Instead, I asked plaintively,

“What frames would you suggest?”

He immediately slid over to a completely different display cabinet and selected two frames and held them out to me saying,

“Either of these would be fine, they suit your face and complexion.”

I nervously, put on one and looked at him nervously awaiting judgement.  He looked at me for a long moment, head held on one side judiciously and them said angrily,

“No, no, no try the other!”

I despairingly obeyed and again he peered at me and I awaited his judgment call with breath abated.  Perhaps these made my face ‘cochon’pig-like?  I was preparing myself for the next cutting remark, when he pronounced,

“These are perfect, they suit your face and skin tone.  The shape is really good on you.”

You cannot begin to know the relief I felt as I left the shop.  Strangely, every year from then on I would ask for the French guy when choosing glasses.  Despite all the hurtful comments I trusted his unflinching honest taste.

Yesterday, while walking down town in Sliema a young sales assistant accosted me on the pavement outside a beautician’s shop.  She asked me my name and then, like the Frenchman, peered aggressively into my face.  She announced,

“I have some cream that will get rid of those wrinkles around your eyes”,

she sounded sure of herself.  It was tempting to respond with,

“Look when you are three times your age, this will be your lot too.” 

But instead just told her I was fine with my wrinkles and walked on.  Later, a young student of mine, who is studying the book Purple Hibiscus pointed at a word in the text,‘wrinkled’ and asked what it meant.  I wrinkled my jacket up and pointed to the creases hoping that would suffice.  It didn't and so I pointed to the area around my eyes and said, “like this!”  She understood immediately and as we proceeded with the lesson my heart sank like a deflated balloon.  Later that evening I put on my reading glasses and looked at my face.

“What the hell had happened!”  Was this me?  Lines had appeared not just around my eyes in great abundance but also around my mouth as if I was permanently whistling.  The whole quality of the skin complexion had changed.  No longer smooth but with indents and river tracks burrowing into flesh.  When on earth had this happened and why had no one told me before?  I spent an unhappy evening googling for answers.  Apparently to not have lines around your mouth, avoid sucking on straws.  Darn useless bit of knowledge for me now!  To avoid creases around the eyes, stop smiling so much.  To never have creases on your upper chest area, a lady in her fifties on youtube informed me that she had never slept on her side her whole life.  Blistering barnacles I had been totally unaware of all these sneaky tricks.  There, I had spent years sucking down drinks, smiling daily like a lunatic and always slept on my side.  I inspected the damage carefully in the mirror and then came to a momentous decision to restore my looks to smooth perfection.  Slowly, I removed my glasses and as if a miracle the wrinkles became invisible.  I smiled amazed at the instant transformation.  Sometimes the solution to life is knowing more but seeing less.

It's hotting up, our lives matter

In August 2003 there was an extraordinary loss of life that occurred in the heart of Europe that seems to have been overlooked by many.  In these days of terrorism, mass shootings and Ebola quiet deaths are just not news.  So when 70,000 people died during the month of August it barely made a ripple abroad.  It was caused by an unusual heat wave and the deaths were mostly elderly.  France alone lost 15,000.  The temperatures rose into the 40s and stayed there for days.  Strangely, even the nights were hot and with so many without air conditioners the elderly were particularly vulnerable.  Social isolation and fragmented families meant that there were just too few to care or notice.  From the 4^th – 14^th August France suffered its longest sequence of hot days on record.  The extent of the human toll was first detected by undertakers, who were being overwhelmed with unclaimed bodies. In Paris, some of the corpses had to be kept in a warehouse outside the city when mortuaries were full.  By the heat wave’s end it became clear that the nation had some soul searching to do.  It was made worse by the fact that bodies, in large numbers, remained unclaimed for burial.  

Given that global warming should contribute to more, not less, of these unusual extreme conditions we have all much to reflect on. Dehydration, hyperthermia and heat stroke fuelling cardiac and respiratory diseases claimed many lives.  The elderly were the vulnerable section of society that bore the brunt of deaths. A disheartening discovery was that one of four victims had no family, friends, or even a single social link.  Such stark isolation along with a lack of national policy of how to deal with such extreme conditions meant the deaths took everyone by surprise.  Shame was also felt by the nation as a whole.  If we judge our society by how it treats the young, the old and the ill then this tragic event highlighted deep problems.  In this electronic age of world wide communication, instant messages, Facebook and Skype it seems, in reality, people are often more isolated than every before.  Loneliness and isolation can actually kill.  How we live as a society can either contribute to our wellbeing or lead to us dying alone and unnoticed.

Lessons must be learned.  Heat waves have happened before in other places.  Chicago had a heat wave in the summer of 1995 and fatalities were mostly from the poorest and most vulnerable African American community.  One community that bucked the trend was the equally poor Hispanic population.  This community is thought to have better survival rates due to its unity and cohesion.  In July 2010 Russia lost a third of their wheat harvest in fires due to a heat wave reaching temperatures of 44 degrees.  By the end of that month 56,000 Russians had died.  

Climate change is happening and its costs are already being felt by life on this planet.  Society is wasting time on wars and battles that are using resources that should be put in place to save lives not end them.  This is one planet and we are one race, the human race.  Each life lost diminishes us.  How we choose to live will effect who and how many will die.  As a society we need to make wise informed choices and learn to build cohesive communities, as if our lives depended on it.  Because they do!

When the Lights Go Out, Aliens Arrive

In many major cities across the world, there have been periodic blackouts when all power is lost.  New York and Los Angeles are examples and it has an incredible effect on the population.  Apart from the sheer inconvenience there are major side effects that are unexpected.   Here are some examples of blackouts giving numbers affected, location and causes.  The scale of these is hard to get your head around.

One interesting side effect of such blackouts is that the authorities regularly get phone calls about aliens at such times.  Particularly noticeable in urban areas, people tell of unusual headlights in the sky.  Strange shapes and brightness that they have never seen before.  They are actually seeing something that fewer and fewer of us ever get to see – the Milky Way.  The light interference from city life means the majority of us will never see our galaxy clearly.  It is spectacular and breath taking.  If you manage to get out into the country on a clear moonless night you will see what is just above us but invisible to so many.

Like so much of the good things in life the noise blinds us to their existence.  Despite the light and sound noise around, it’s important to find that quiet place that let's us really see where we are and who we are.

“One hour’s reflection is preferable to seventy years of pious worship” 

Baha'i Writings