I've been meaning to write about this article I read in the Guardian recently about the new eyelash fertiliser, called Latisse.

Yes, it's finally happened - women can now buy something that makes their eyelashes grow. More solutions for problems we haven't got. 

The product, the firm disingenously claims, is aimed at those who've - for instance - lost their eyelashes to chemotherapy.

While allowing that chemotherapy can indeed make your eyelashes fall out, and that this can be distressing, the situation is usually temporary. Nor, when your body is stuffed full of chemicals that CAUSE your eyelashes to fall out, are many women keen to add yet more chemicals into their systems. 

Tthe truth is, the women that this product is really aimed at are the rest of us - the general population who can't stretch to lash extensions or never got the hang of falsies, but who with age and general raddlement do not have lashes as long and luscious as we would like (ie: just about everyone except Bambi). 

Well, this might be all well and good (God forbid any woman should actually be allowed to be happy with herself as she is for five minutes) if this product had no side effects, but it does. One of them is that is can temporarily change the colour of your eyelid skin and permanently change your eye colour. Well, I don't know about you, dear reader, but I would be running a mile from any drug that could do any such thing. What the hell else might it be doing in your system?

The article is pretty withering about the UK's general lackadasical attitude to beauty treatments, including fillers, Botox and all the rest - personally, I had no idea that regulations are so much more lax in the UK than in the US.  Looks like there's one word that British women should be learning in case they need it - granuloma. Read the article and see what I mean...

For a lot of women, a side effect of ageing is that their lashes get thinner and sparser - and their immediate reaction is to switch to a volumising mascara.

This is a mistake. As your lashes get thinner, they also get shorter, and a thickening mascara can give you a very clumpy look, like a teenager who's just learning. Far better is to switch to a lengthening mascara, with very very fine fibres in it, and apply two or three coats as needed. As with all mascara, open your eye wide and apply the product to the roots, then wiggle the brush up through your lashes. This way you get a natural look, and a strong eyeline. For daytime, stick to brown mascara unless you have jet-black hair, as anything else tends to look too harsh.

Personally I favour the Respectissime dual-end one by La Roche Posay, which has a conditioning wax at one end and the mascara at the other. The wax makes the mascara glide on really easily and stay put once it's there. Other manufacturers offer similar products.

For daytime, however, I recently also bought to their Definition mascara, which has a very fine wand and is perfect for building up exactly the coating you need without either lengthening or volumising your lashes. It's great if you have sensitive eyes, as it's fibre-free and hypoallergenic. In terms of how it looks once it's on, it reminds me of the old cake mascara from the 1960s, that you had to wet and then applied with a little stiff brush. This was time-consuming and fiddly, but the end result was very controllable and built up smoothly for a perfect result. Like that old kind of mascara, Definition is totally water soluble, so will streak your face at the slightest teardrop, but my eyes are so tender that I prefer this to a waterproof one.

Your 40s is also the time to think about false eyelashes for special occasions, and to practise in the bathroom (not five minutes before your wedding ceremony). The newer false lashes are a completely different animal from the spidery wings we all knew growing up (which went with purple, blue or green eyeshadow and frosted lipstick). They come in strips of varying lengths, look very natural, and you should just cut a few and apply them to the outer corner of your eye. Then curl your lashes as normal, then apply mascara as normal, and the whole lot should blend in nicely. For an idea of what's available, check out Ardell.

There are, of course, even newer options on the market, such as lash extensions, which are woven into your existing eyelashes just like hair extensions on your head. This, I feel, is going too far down the route of decadence at $300 a time (plus endless top-ups that cost nearly $100), but a woman's money is her own to spend after all. The results are spectacular and you can see them here. Once you have eyelash extensions, you can't use waterproof mascara or oil-based make-up removers, or you'll bring the bonded lashes off, and there is one other downside - some doctors believe their overuse can lead to you losing your eyelashes altogether, a condition known as traction alopecia.

For women who have lost their eyelashes altogether - a situation that is becoming sadly more common due to chemotherapy - you can have an eyelash transplant. It isn't cheap, coming in at about $6,000 and currently performed only by one doctor in Florida (though he is training others), but the results are permanent. The transplants aren't eyelash hair - they're normal hair taken from your own head, so you have to trim them, dye them and curl them in order for them to look like normal lashes. Only you can decide if this is worth it (and by the way, the surgery's performed under local, not general anaesthetic). For details, check out this YouTube video.

The DH and I finally got round to seeing ours the other day. It wasn't for want of trying, I should add. Here in rural France, it's a 4-to-6-month wait, and last year we couldn't get in. Nevertheless, it was a surprise to find I hadn't seen her for four years. That's a bit too long, and it's risking glaucoma, so I was relieved to find there's nothing wrong with my eyes.

It doesn't stop me being blind as a fecking bat, of course. Night blind, short sighted etc. But being shortsighted, my vision is now improving with age (very common, apparently), so my glasses need changing because the prescription is now too strong. In fact, I don't need correction at all for reading, which is why my glasses are on and off my nose all day long. It's very irritating. Now, fortunately, I have a prescription for 'progressive' lenses so that should be sorted out very soon.

However, I do have another problem with my eyes that I wanted to speak to her about. They're very dry and get irritated really easily. In the mornings, it feels like someone's punched me in the face. I've got humidifiers on all the rads, and a big pot of water on the stove, and I avoid the wind, the sun, red wine and hot spices, but still I have this problem. I wondered if this was to do with my age, as my skin is also becoming much dryer in my mid-40s than it's ever been before.

But I also have rosacea. There is a nasty link between rosacea, which affects your skin, and ocular rosacea, which affects your eyeballs (which, after all, are covered in skin), and it can leave you with iritis (even blindness, if you don't watch your step). Four years ago, she'd advised me to use artificial tears, and I use these morning and night, but still, lately, my eyes had been sore and dry much of the time.

The culprit, she told me, was my computer screen. "Where do you position it?" she asked me, and when I showed her - chin up, in line with my sightline - she shook her head. The latest thinking is that you should look down at your screen, she said, much as you would with a book if you were holding in your hands. For this reason, the screen should also be tilted away from you. Although this is theoretically bad for your neck, which is why I'd always been told to keep the screen higher, modern research is showing that it's far better for your eyes to look downwards, because when the screen is higher, you keep your eyes fully open. And that's a bad thing, because when you blink, you only half-close your eyes, so that you don't lose track in the text you're reading, and over time that naturally leads to dry eyes.

So, I've repositioned my screen and to tell the truth, it's a lot better. And I've also got a prescription for 'Refresh' drops from Allergan. Time will tell if they help, but fingers crossed my days of rubbing my sore, red eyes are now over.