Let’s do this together

Edited by SIOBHANMCNALLY

If the wrinkles around my eyes are laughter lines, then my life must have been bloody hilarious.

However, I honestly don’t mind ageing – as George Clooney said, it’s better than the alternative – but one of the few things I do miss from my smooth-skinned days was being able to apply eyeliner with ease.

On the few occasions I dust off my old make-up bag and pull out the few products that The Dark Lord can’t even be bothered to relocate into her room, it is the perfect eye pencil that eludes me the most.

What I want to do is apply a thin black line and a flick. What I end up doing is having to pull my eyelids straight to iron out the folds. Which means my first thin line of liner goes on straight, and when I let the skin snap (or slowly creep) back into place, the flick disappears.

So I try again, and again, until I stand back and look again, and realise I’ve now drawn a wobbly isosceles triangle up the side of my head.

And that’s with my good right eye. When I need to do my left eye, it means I have to close my right eye, except I’m practically blind in the left, so the world goes all fuzzy and I usually end up poking myself in my eyeball.

The same with mascara, which now has to do a lot of heavy lifting with my sparse lashes.

I used to have eyebrows until I plucked them to look like Debbie Harry in the early 80s, then they grew back. I plucked them again in the 90s to look like All Saints, but they never grew back that time so I’ve been using magic wands to fill in the gaps.

Word is, though, that thin eyebrows from the 90s are back in again after years of facial slugs being on trend. As are crop tops and combats, but these days I’d look more crash victim than fashion victim.

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

Our four-legged smelly friends are part of the family, and when they sadly go to the happy hunting grounds in the sky, we’re left heartbroken.

But amateur painter John Cooper, who lives in Seaford, East Sussex, has been using his artistic talent to breathe life back into family and friends’ dogs who have crossed the rainbow bridge.

“My two dogs, Elvis and Lulu, passed away last year, and I painted them almost as therapy,” admits John. “I used to paint at school but took it up again a year ago during the pandemic. And now in my own small way, I’m trying to help friends who have lost their dogs. Bulldog Winston passed on just a couple of weeks ago, and the other is my French bulldog, Elvis.”

Calling all artists, photographers and crafters – send snaps of your work to siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk and don’t forget to include a selfie, your age and location, and tell us what inspires you.