I GET on with my son. We can talk about most things and he often rings up for advice on various matters. Whether he takes the advice I don't know. I suspect not, because children, even at his age, can be a bit perverse. But it's nice that he asks in the first place. He also passes on bits and pieces of information he wants to share with me. Health tips, such as the time he told me that if I knew as much about milk as he did I'd never drink it again because he knew a bloke at work who had worked in the dairy industry and had some horror stories I just wouldn't believe. Much of this information is gleaned from reading too many tabloid paper health pages, which if you follow daily would lead you to stop eating or drinking at all and which ought to carry a Government health warning themselves. 'Too many tabloid health pages can lead you to chronic hypochondria and a sharp increase in your blood pressure'. I'm actually on my way to see him now, and I know he read the latest expose on packages of salad so I expect a stern lecture coupled with grisly details of lettuce dipped in carbolic acid, so I won't be asking for a small green salad on the side. I'm taking my own milk. He has, however, never passed on any beauty tips, so I was surprised when he said the other day 'I've got a beauty tip for you.' It wasn't April Fool's Day so I wondered what it could be. 'Sandra Bullock swears by it and she's got lovely skin', he said. Pausing to wonder how he'd got up close to Sandra Bullock when he lives in Bristol and she lives in California, I asked him to go on. He named a product. I won't pass it on because I don't want to be responsible for medical mishaps, and neither does the Cornish Times. But I'd never heard of it. 'If it's one of those fancy expensive anti-wrinkle creams then forget it,' I said. He said it wasn't. It wasn't expensive at all and available in every chemists' shop. 'It's a pile cream,' he said. 'WHAT! 'You know, for haemorrhoids,' he said. 'I know what piles are,' I said crossly, 'I had enough warnings from my grandmother about sitting on cold steps which, as far as she was concerned, lead inevitably to piles.' He explained that the theory was that this preparation, when applied to its proper location reduced swelling because it shrank the blood vessels etc. I closed my eyes and tried not to think of wrinkle-free piles. Good old Sandra, and goodness knows how she thought to use it elsewhere in the first place, has apparently found that when applied to the face and neck it flattens out wrinkles and leaves her face as smooth as – er – a baby's bottom. 'It's all the rage,' he said. 'And look at it this way, if you apply it to delicate areas ('Don't go on,' I said but he did) it can hardly harm your face which has tougher skin.' He had a point, but I left it there, thanking him for his advice which was surely well meant and told him I'd give it long and careful thought. Everyone's totally obsessed with wrinkles these days, you can hardly open any paper or magazine without finding at least one article on how to stem the tide of age and more and more people are going to desperate lengths to iron out bits of themselves. In America, the land where someone first thought of injecting a deadly poison once used in germ warfare into their faces so that they look ten years younger, but slightly deader than before, it's even worse. My friend Terry was one married to a batty woman who worked herself into a nervous breakdown every time she found a tiny line on her face. When I visited them the marriage was already on the downward spiral, one reason being, she told me, was that their daily maintenance schedules were not compatible. This was, I discovered, because he left the loo seat up in their joint bathroom and occasional hairs in the sink after shaving. So he was banished to the second bathroom. This was a woman who, at the age of 48, had braces fixed on her teeth because they weren't straight enough. There's something rather scary about an adult with a mouthful of steel, unless it's in a James Bond film, but I gave her top marks for perseverance, although it was rather difficult to understand a word she was saying. Her daily maintenance included completing a series of facial exercises which could have been mistaken for Tourette's Syndrome and would certainly have awarded her the national championship in gurning had she lived in the UK. She made a slight attempt to ask me about my daily maintenance schedule but when I said 'Getting up and lighting a cigarette', she didn't bother any more, except when she mentioned the word wrinkle she always gazed rather pointedly at my face. Eventually, slightly miffed at this, I told her sternly that in England we didn't call them wrinkles we called them 'life experience indentations'. She nodded slowly and took this on board as the gospel truth. Who says Americans don't understand irony? Almost certainly this lady, and all her wrinkle-worrying friends, will be slathering pile ointment on their faces as I speak. As I write this, I'm about to depart to see my daughter in Germany, flying Air Berlin. I don't know why, but there's something slightly worrying about an airline called Air Berlin. I suppose it's because me and my wrinkles remember the Cold War. I expect she's laid plans for a variety of shopping trips. And why shouldn't she? Mothers and daughters are supposed to enjoy shopping together but sadly not this mother. I'm a shopper who goes out knowing what she wants, has a quick look around and buys it. My daughter is exactly the opposite and always has been, bless her. She likes window shopping, trailing round every single shop in a radius of about nine miles and then going back to buy what she probably saw in the first shop. She knows I'm not into this, but craftily drops little hints about stopping off for coffee and having a nice lunch in a little restaurant she knows, which tempt me into a mega shopping trip. This year, it's even craftier because she casually mentioned that there was a nice botanical garden in the town which she knew I would love. I'm not that daft. I'll bet my last euro that on the way to the nice botanical garden we'll have to pass right by a giant branch of Ikea. Now I've nothing against Ikea's products, they're very good, but I just wish I didn't have to go to Ikea to buy them. The last time I was forced through the doors I bought a gazebo which was a devil of a thing to get back on the plane. And so I must go and pack my case, which includes the usual supply of Easter eggs for the children. I made a big mistake this year in thinking that the best time to buy Easter eggs when they wouldn't be needed until a week later was after Easter. Sadly, although some eggs were reduced, they were all for girls and I didn't think that my grandson would be terribly enthused with a Barbie egg or one clutched by a tiny replica of Winnie the Pooh. I ended up with having to buy one from a colleague, which he swears is untouched. But I'll be checking for tooth marks just the same.
