Advisor

Earlier today I made a cheeky 200 smackers flogging old jam jars in the heartless snakepit that is the Phnom Penh Buy, Sell, Haggle, and Troll Pathetic Uber-Thrifters With Uncalled-For But Hilarious Passive Aggressive Comments Group Facebook Page. As I pocketed the cash and donned my formal shopping sombrero against the sun, which I’m positive was tethered at the end of my street, I had every intention of trawling a couple of appliance emporia for a spanking new front loader. I’d even measured the hole in our kitchen island and organised a “plumber.”

But, like Jack out of Jack and the Beanstalk, send me out to buy a cow and I’ll come back with a beanbag and a hundredweight of mango pickle. This sweat-drenched arvo was no exception. I stood under the numpang guy’s Anchor umbrella, palms upturned, weighing my options like a heat-struck mime. Underpaid, slack-jawed shufflers sans clue at the flyblown washing machine place? Or me-time with whale music and an aesthetician called Fab? Before you can say “Take a little more off the top, thanks Lionel!” I was nestled in my new favourite wrinklearium in the heart of CharmingVille’s cosmeceuticals district waiting for a hypodermic and 14 units of “Wow, I thought you were only 27!” Well, hello Clostridium botulinum.

Back in the early noughties my face looked exactly like a baby’s arse, except for the whisper of a line tiptoeing across the bridge of my nose. I obsessed over this ever deepening groove – a product of squinting into a monitor on exotic locations while filming panty shield ads with gallons of blue liquid and girls running through slow motion raindrops laughing and laughing. It was a proper job that paid extortionately well and, since at that time I had no tots or helpmeets to pester the bank balance, it was entirely up to me how I frittered it all away. I chose travel, drugs and facial renovation. Imagine my delight when I found I could combine all three.

During my Southeast Asian salad days the SARS pandemic was in full plague. But I was a mercenary advertising spinner who could weave a silver lining from the blackest winding sheet. I’d nip across to deserted, desperate Singapore and hole up in an almost empty Grand Hyatt for tuppence ha’penny a night. It was lucky that airfares and hotels were so cheap, ‘cos Botox and filler cost a fucking arm and a leg back then. So I’d have a glass of bubbles around 8am, wander down to a shiny medical tower on Orchard and come out an hour later 800 bucks lighter, with bloody pinpricks on my forehead and lips the size of bagels.

Botox is less tiny painful pearls of acid and more straight liquid poison, so although Doctor Joyce was the Michelangela of mouth sculpture, I stopped doing the filler because actually they’re just pumping your lip tubes with nano beady things and it really, really hurts. It makes you sweat and squeal, and not in a good way. I had the option of anaesthetic cream but was too impatient to shop the going-out-of-business sales than to wait 40 minutes for it to work. There was also novocaine but how can you stuff your gob with gourmet laksa if you can’t feel anything from the neck up?

The last time I got my forehead chemically ironed was almost a year ago in Bangers. Frivolous trips to the gender reassignment capital of the world for 10 minutes at Miss Porn Orchid Face and Bodyworks are out of the question since I joined the impecunious ranks of CharmingVille’s midlife wanderers. I searched for a clinic right here in our glorious, naturally attractive hamlet that met simple criteria: cheap, A/C, all the lights on, clean needles and absolutely no fucking Kenny G.

The place I found not only fit this bill, but Prince had obviously had a hand in the décor. As I reclined on the electric purple crushed velvet chaise, the silver glitter wallpaper twinkled with actual Swarovski crystals and my “doctor” prepared my head skin with a lavender satin icepack. In the time it took him to get his cosmetology diploma I was punctured and pricked and relaxing in the Recovery Parlour listening to the soundtrack of Frozen. I’m not lying about that bit. It was eerie. Anyhow, there was iced water and ladies around me in various face swaddles playing Facebook. Except for the one droopy eye, I felt I was looking 10 years younger already.

I know I should have plumped for the Miele. But no one ever dies wishing they’d done more washing. When I fall off the perch and Joaquin Phoenix is kissing my cheek adieu at my open casket post clog-pop carouse he’ll marvel at my enduring youthful good looks, and I’ll be happy knowing that getting some work done was all worth it in the end.