by Chrissy Iley
I love instant gratification. Life is too short for deferred pleasure, and sometimes you need a little help just getting out of the door.
Last night I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about a text that said my data roaming had cost £614. At 4am I woke to another saying in the last 24-hours my data roaming was now £1,057.
I am in LA but there was nothing for it. I had to call O2 whose call centre is in South Africa. How could it be that answering a few emails had cost nearly £400 in 24 hours. I had to explain to them I have not downloaded a movie, an app, visited a web site or slipped on to YouTube by accident.
The first task? Getting through to them. By the time I punched in number after number and waited to speak to an actual person the phone cut off. It did this again. And again, before I even got to speak to a single person. I asked them if they would mind calling me back. They said they wouldn’t call me in LA from their landlines, nor would they even call me on my British cell phone as they were all very worried about how I would be paying the bill.
It was a nightmare but I was awake. Every time I got into a discussion the phone cut off. Finally, two hours later, I managed to speak to a sensible sounding woman who agreed something strange must be going on and my case would be investigated.
This is a long way of saying I woke up and studied myself in the mirror, only to find that I looked like a woman drowning in anxiety, whose face was grey and blotchy, puffy, all in all having its very own nightmare.
Imagine if there was a therapy that could wipe the evidence of such stress away. If something could make me look fresh faced, vibrant, and awake, I might feel I could face the day.
I heard about Le Metier de Beaute’s Peel and Mask (£210.95) from Oprah magazine. Oprah swears by it. Oprah’s skin is pretty fantastic. Oprah I’m sure is prone to high level emotions and stress. So I tried some instant revitalization therapy. The peel brushes on. The brush is inside the tube. It’s more of a gel than a cream. It tingles, sometimes intensely. The packaging tells me it will diminish the look of fine lines and wrinkles, increase hydration and is filled with a blend of salicylic and glycolic acids. They are delivered to the skin via Syntoc Actif.
I have no idea about the ins and outs of its operating system but its effect is to resurface the skin, getting rid of dead skin cells to deliver a younger looking and more vibrant complexion. The nozzle can be turned off and on to stop the product exploding or gently leaking. I applied a light layer across my face. You can leave it on for five minutes, but I left it for only one, avoiding the eye area and hairline.
After this comes the glow mask. I have to say it smells awful. It smells like old glue and off yoghurt. It can be applied with fingers, a brush or the applicator that comes in the kit, which looks like a black knife. While I am all for more is more, in this case more just becomes impossible to remove. A thin layer of this stuff is best. You can peel it off and it is like peeling Clingfilm from your face. You can leave it on for up to 15 minutes. I left mine on for much less. If you apply too much it doesn’t dry and it becomes irritating to scrub off.
The results though are pretty fantastic. After this home spa treatment which really doesn’t take long, even if you want it to, there’s a dramatic result. The mask makes your face look super dewy. It gets rid of the dull haven’t-slept skin. It also helps with hyper-pigmentation, and any redness caused by the peel is soothed out and the result is a restored, supple, fresh face, radiant and even.
As the box says: Ready, Set, Glow. It feels as though everything is tingling in the right places. It feels like I can face the world and more to the point, hold my own with O2.