Beauty Updates

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Celebrating 50 Years of Molton Brown

To celebrate 50 years, this month sees Molton Brown launch their Limited Edition Orange & Bergamot. Inspired by sundraped Seville, the citrus and white-floral fragrance is Molton Brown’s best-selling scent. To help celebrate the birthday milestone, four of the key products (Bath & Shower Gel, Body Lotion, Liquid Hand Soap, Hand Lotion) within the range will transform into a new limited edition packaging. Taking inspiration from the original design that graced the bottles back in the 70’s, when Orange & Bergamot first launched, the new design brings the beautiful orange tree to life and would look beautiful in any bathroom!

Springtime Blossoms

It’s time to discover the new colourful Blossoms collection, from Jo Malone London. Two brand-new fragrances celebrate the beauty of the hibiscus flower: Yellow Hibiscus, a beaming and juicy light floral and Red Hibiscus, a vivid solar floral and the fragrance house’s first Blossom Cologne Intense. These two new fragrances are joined by returning Frangipani Flower, a radiant floral and Nashi Blossom, a playful light floral. All available at

www.jomalone.co.uk. Skinimalism

Skinimalism is the term used to keep your skincare to a minimum. The latest beauty trend is to use less, buy slower, and having minimal products in your bathroom cabinet, making this easy is Studio Botanics simple range of purely plant-based products. These include Face Serum (£55), Face Cream (£30) and Eye Cream (£30) all available from

www.level7beautyhall.com.

Maskne Skin

Maskne is the new acne! Maskne happens when protective facial coverings cause friction on the skin, leading to irritation, clogged pores and breakouts. IMAGE Skincare have launched their Maskne KIT (£110), which features three of their best-selling products including MAX™ Stem Cell Facial Cleanse, Purifying Probiotic Mask and Clear Cell Restoring Serum.

Midlife Madness

My father-in-law, who has been happily married for longer than most people have been alive, came up with a brilliant new word the other day – ‘arguefy’. He was talking about the fact that he and his spouse did a daily crossword which gave numerous opportunities to arguefy. Now I must say here that I admire firstly that they managed to stay married for over 60 years and secondly that they still enjoy a good argument.

Being together day in and day out may be paradise for some couples but for others the intensity might all be a bit too much with limited opportunities for engaging with others outside the home especially when each day can feel very like the one before. So, I’m sure many of us have found a whole load of diverse ways of amusing ourselves.

This might have involved new hobbies anything from jigsaws, apparently, they are in short supply, various sorts of ‘crafting’ and I know my hubby loves to play guitar but 2 (yes not one but 2 new guitars have found their way into the family). One was a very lovely parlour sized one for me but the other, well not sure about that one – it wasn’t even a ‘bogof’. Then I notice on amazon (yes, a bit of spousal amazon stalking is ok in my book) that a new red one is being considered. He tells me about them eventually, well let’s be honest, they are hard to hide but there is a limit to the number of instruments we can provide a good home for. I suggested selling the Banjo which had been hibernating under the bed for years but I was met with a very hurt look so I dropped the idea.

While we are on about good homes my understanding is that lots of people are buying puppies – which means prices have rocketed – we actually had thought about it but when I discovered you have to spend thousands, the price of a pretty good holiday –(I know we can’t have a holiday but we will again soon, surely) I sort of went off the idea. I think we probably need a new slogan though, ‘a dog is for life not just lockdown’.

Anyway, the main course of our arguefying recently has been birds. I’ve mentioned before that feeding and watching the birds in our garden is one of our little lockdown pleasures – or maybe it’s actually a getting older pleasure. I must confess I blame the bird watch survey for our new found angst as it got us unto not just casually watching them as the flit about, tweet, spill seed all over the garden and poop everywhere, but identifying them with some degree of accuracy. The survey is long gone but we have somehow become competitive about accurate identification.

Now obviously it’s pretty easy to tell a pigeon from a sparrow, even with the challenges of aging eyesight, and our garden isn’t huge so we are generally fairly close if we are in our conservatory but trust me when it comes to deciding if it’s a great tit or a coal tit is much harder. Yes, there are differences but they are small birds and of course they don’t always sit still within range but rather fly around often in bushes with leaves etc so it’s not as easy as you’d imagine at first. AND there is no adjudicator – so we can’t ever get a definite ‘winner’ which has both a plus – we each assume we were right – and a minus – we each assume we were right. One bit of mirth is that grandson finds the fact that you can say ‘tits’ with impunity when referring to birds hilarious and when we watched a wildlife programme the other night and he discovered there were also shags and boobies he’s decided ornithology is the career path for him!