In which I practice pouting

I don't know about you but I am so incredibly bored of the whole credit crunch doom and gloom. Personally I hold the media responsible. If they didn't tell everyone that there was financial disaster in the banking sector, the average man in the street wouldn't know and would carry on spending away. This would mean that businesses would remain profitable and people would stay in jobs. I think if we all collectively stick our heads in the sand or our fingers in our ears, we could achieve the exact thing the Chancellor tried to do yesterday by lowering the VAT rate. Only without the higher tax rates at the end of it. Vote HomeOfficeMum for Chancellor of the Exchequer!

But moving swiftly on to far more important subjects. Lip plumping gloss. Now I'm not really very good at being a girl. I do own eyelash curlers which gives me a foot in the door to the Girly Girls club, but that's just a throw back from when I lived in NYC and leaving the apartment without perfectly applied make up was a greater sin than not dressing up for Halloween. I don't follow the latest fashion or beauty trends. I'm not really sure I know what botox is. And achieving 'a natural dewy look' for me means getting out of bed and doing the school run without fully rubbing my moisturiser in.

So while looking for Christmas gift ideas recently I stumbled upon some Lip Plumping Gloss. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain I recalled a TV show where they tested these plumping products. Being the owner of a very thin pair of lips, a pucker pout is something I'd quite fancy having. Thin lips = hard, cold, bitchy. Plump lips = friendly, sexy, lovely. So I bought some of the Soap & Glory Sexy Mother Pucker lip plumping gloss.

With great excitement, I applied it. And watched. And waited. For a full minute nothing happened. Conned again, I thought. Then all of a sudden, it felt like I'd just munched my way through a bowl of prawns. (Being allergic to shellfish, I've had on rare occasions, the pleasure of feeling my lips and tongue and indeed face swell up.) My lips began to tingle. Initially it felt quite nice. Like the first tingles you get when you use a TENS machine during labour. But then it got stronger and more intense. My lips felt on fire. I was convinced the product was actually made out of squashed shrimp. I was about to rub it off when I looked in the mirror.

There before me stood my face with big lips. Not vast. Not Mick Jagger-esque. But certainly on the fuller side. Fabulous, I thought. No pain, no gain and all that.

And then I tried to talk. I no longer had control of my lips. They were a force unto themselves. It felt like I'd just left the dentist's chair after several anaethetising injections. I could feel drool start to dribble out the corner of my mouth. It wasn't pretty and effectively undid the good work that the big, pouty lips were supposed to achieve in the first place. Less sexy love goddess, more dribbling, blubbering mess. What's more, my lips were very, very sticky. I couldn't imagine kissing my husband for fear that we might never come unstuck (not that he really fancied getting a mouthful of drool anyway).

Not a triumphant success then. But I didn't give up. I have used it since and am finally mastering control of my lips so that I can now talk without spitting. I'm beginning to get used to the tingle (in fact regular lipstick is starting to feel fairly dull in comparison) and my husband might even want to kiss me again soon.

So there you have it boys and girls. A beginner's guide to fat lips. For allergy prone people on a credit crunch budget, simply rub whatever you're allergic to on your lips for the same effect.