My lips are sealed on the latest fashionable beauty ‘tweakments’ - Susan Morrison

​No, she assured her mum, it didn’t really hurt. That surprised me, because everytime she dabbed those lips she noticeably winced. Yes, she said, the swelling should go down. At the time the swelling was clearly still going up. Her lips were beginning to resemble over-inflated inner tubes.

Obviously, there had been lip-filling going on. Another young woman sitting further down glanced up and I saw the same weird pout. It's everywhere. They call it ‘tweakments’. It's fashionable, I know, but young women paying to have needles stuck in their faces to pump up perfectly acceptable lips seems a little extreme, and mildly dangerous. We just had false eyelashes and colour-changing lipstick.

Cosmetic surgery was the preserve of the rich, but now it's in the reach of just about anyone. An advert for a clinic in Turkey promised to return my breasts to youthful pertness, which I suppose they could if they can find them. I think they’re in landfill round Shotts way.

Everyone can afford to have their breasts bigger, the ad said. Finance terms were available. What happens if women default on the payments? It's not like car credit. They can’t turn up and take the boobs back. Perhaps they can. Given our sagging economy, I’m willing to bet a lot of women are feeling the financial pressure of those expensive frontal elevations. Perhaps it's time for a start-up company that reposes credit-card boobs and resells them on the second-hand market. We could call it ‘Boom & Bust’.

Don’t think I could bothered going under the knife, especially on a voluntary basis. Mind you, I did once give myself a nip-and-tuck by wrapping sellotape around my face, but it stopped me breathing, and I figure that’s a serious side-effect. I think I’ll leave the tweakments to the youngsters.