At our weekly girls catch up, one of my friends seemed a little out of sorts until I got to the bottom of her problem.

“I’ve just discovered a lump,” Fiona nervously confessed.

“A lump?” I repeated.

“Well, I think it’s a lump,” she added.

“But maybe it’s more of a growth.”

“You must be worried sick,” I sympathised with my pal.

“Yes, well I only discovered it this morning and need to make sure I get to the doctor’s first thing tomorrow.”

“Where is the lump?” I dared to ask.

Blushing, she pointed to her nether regions, and for some reason I offered.

“Do you want me to have a look?”

Hesitantly we headed to the toilets and returned a few moments later to our group of anxious friends.

“Well?” All eyes were on us.

“Do you want to tell them or will I?” I rolled my eyes at my pal.

Aware that my friend had worked herself up into a frenzy and was convinced she had some sort of malignant growth, I poked and prodded until I made a discovery.

“It’s a lump of wax,” she confessed to the group.

“Eh?”

“Yes wax,” I confirmed.

Seemingly our numpty friend Fiona had visited the beauticians to get her bikini line waxed a couple of days earlier, and hadn’t noticed at the time that the beautician mistakenly left on some wax which had now hardened and stuck to her skin.

“I feel a bit of a fool now,” she smirked.

“At least you’re OK,” I added, relieved that our pal was suffering from nothing more serious than a bout of idiocy.

Thereafter, we started a conversation about our variety of beauty treatments which hadn’t quite worked out as we planned.

“Remember the first time I got Botox?,” Christine attempted to lighten the mood.

And I did remember because her attempts to roll back the years had backfired somewhat.

Christine appeared excited when she first told me that a girl she knew was looking for a model to practice her Botox injections.

“She’s offering to do it a good bit cheaper because she is still practicing," Christine enthused.

“And as I’m heading off of my big birthday celebration cruise, I want to look my best.”

But……

And there’s always a ‘but.’

Scanning Christine’s glamorous cruise pictures on her return, I couldn’t help but point out that she looked rather tired and even somewhat torn faced in most of the pictures.

“I was told I was injected with a little too much Botox above my right eyebrow which caused my brow and eyelid to droop somewhat.”

And droop it did because for the next three months she looked as though she was suffering from Bell’s palsy until the Botox wore off.

Co-incidentally, my colleague who, for obvious reasons shall remain anonymous, passed my desk on the way out for her lunch break recently.

“You off somewhere nice?” I asked.

“It’s Botox time again for me,” she stated.

And sure enough she was heading to her Botox expert a few streets away to have her Botox topped up in her lunch break.

“Come with me if you like?,” she offered.

However, I politely declined as I had no notion to watch her have needles jabbed into her face.

But less than an hour later she appeared back at my desk.

“That’s was heck of a quick,” I stated the obvious as she began to unfold her lunchtime drama.

Apparently, she stood outside the Botox Clinic repeatedly pressing the buzzer to get in and no-one answered.

“I could see the practitioner at the window one floor up so after about ten minutes trying to get in, I called her mobile.”

Finally in the building and lying on the bed the practitioner started work jabbing one side of my colleagues face when suddenly she almost jumped off the bed due to a very loud shrilling noise.

“Janice, the bloody fire alarm went off mid-way through my treatment.”

Not sure what to say, I kept quiet and let her carry on with her story.

“Next minute I had to grab my handbag and was turfed out on to the busy street.”

“Why didn’t you wait till you were allowed back in?,” I asked the obvious.

“I stood for half an hour and there was still no sign of us getting back in to finish my treatment, so that’s why I’m back so quickly.”

“Oh well, I suppose you can you back after work and get the other side of you face done,” I stated.

“That’s the thing Janice.”

“After my appointment the practitioner was heading straight to the airport for her holiday!”

So there was my colleague standing in front of me with one side of her face looking OK and the other side covered in red needle marks and I thought to myself.

“This’ll be interested in a couple of days when the Botox starts to freeze half her face!”