How I handle to do my make-up with unhealthy eyesight: If you are struggling to use it correctly due to your spectables, I’ve the ingenious resolution writes MARIANNE JONES

It may have started when I woke up and saw Donald Trump staring back at me in the mirror, having rubbed tanning drops into my face instead of serum the night before.

Or the time I applied my eyeliner so cack-handedly that I resembled the love child of 1970s shock-rocker Alice Cooper.

And let’s not go there with mistaking nail polish remover for toner, as my face has only just forgiven me.

The fact is, like many women in late midlife, my eyesight has become so bad that my beauty routine is a bit of a blur. My lippy is wonky, foundation patchy and eyebrows unintentionally quizzical. Reading the label of almost any cosmetics bottle is even more of a challenge and involves deciphering what looks like hieroglyphics written by an ant doing the moonwalk.

Sight has never been my strong point. I’ve worn glasses since I was 11 and my prescription is now an eye-watering -10.5. My specs are thicker than the bottom of jam jars and turn me into Velma from Scooby Doo. Up until my 50s I navigated this by wearing contact lenses at all times, but suddenly, along with night sweats and a disappearing jawline, I couldn’t see anything closer than arm’s length.

Welcome to the infuriating world of reading glasses, where, despite having about 17 pairs – in every bag, room of the house and hanging from jumpers I’m wearing – they disappear off the face of the earth (and my actual face) the minute I need them.

And when I do triumphantly hunt down a pair, they do not – repeat not – help with my beauty routine. You may already have discovered to your cost that it’s pretty tricky to apply mascara with your specs on. Ditto showering. Hands up if the odds of conditioning your hair before shampooing it are 50-50 because a) you can’t read the minuscule print on the damn bottle and b) even if you could, most haircare products no longer use simple, clear, helpful words like ‘shampoo’ or ‘conditioner’. In my bathroom right now, I have a bottle of ‘molecular repair system’ (shampoo) and a tub of ‘metal detox that prevents breakage and colour shift’ (conditioner).

‘Hardly sophisticated’, but flip-lens make-up specs with reading prescription do help, says Marianne

It’s the same with skincare products. Even when they’re clear enough to read, I don’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed by the increasingly poetic descriptions on the containers in my bathroom cabinet. I have a serum that calls itself a sap, a moisturiser that’s a ‘face topical supplement’ and a bottle of ‘Cica Complex Biome Booster’ that I haven’t used as I’ve forgotten what it is.

I’ve tried doing my make-up wearing contact lenses but have to stand so far away from the mirror that it becomes a game of pin the tail on the donkey. I’ve also tried without contacts in, which means my nose is so close to the mirror I leave steamy nostril marks on the glass.

The internet throws up very little practical advice, despite this being a daily annoyance for tens of thousands of us. One discussion on a popular social media forum suggested not much more than what I was already doing, along with investing in strong bathroom lighting, labelling your products in large print and buying mini travel-brush sets to get your face even closer to the mirror.

So, what in the name of Mr Magoo is the solution? Enter stage left not one but two products designed to alleviate myopic make-up mishaps. A brand called Donna May London has come up with some Magnified Make-up Glasses with Flip Lens, plus a double-sided x 10 LED Magnifying Mirror (donnamaylondon.com). Being desperate, I’m willing to give them a whirl and, what’s more, the products are bargain-tastic at £12 for the cyclops specs and £32 for the mirror.

First up, the glasses, which are aimed at the 50-plus market and described as ‘the secret weapon you didn’t know you needed’. They are worth it for comedy value alone and gave my sons a good laugh. You order them in your normal reading prescription (I’m a +2 in readers) and they look like a cheap pair of plastic glasses but contain only one lens that’s moveable. 

It means you can apply shadow to your right eye while staring through the left lens, then simply flip it across to do the left. Hardly sophisticated stuff but it did mean I could see clearly enough out of one eye to apply liner evenly to the other, rather than looking like I’d just returned worse for wear from a bottomless brunch. It also sorted my stray eyebrow hairs as I normally need to zoom in so close to the mirror that my tweezers hit the glass. 

Best of all, it meant I could reapply make-up for a night out without having to first take out my contact lenses and then put them back in (if you know, you know).

The magnifying mirror, enhanced by its bright LED lighting surround, worked a bit too successfully, if I’m honest. When you’re faced with, well, your own face reflected back at you like a giant full moon complete with craters, there are things you would rather unsee. I’ll keep the list short, but they included white hairs in my eyebrows, broken veins around my nose and the beginnings of a rather fine midlife moustache. And I will confess to squeezing a blackhead that could have comfortably stayed unnoticed on my chin.

Neither of these products could be described as elegant, but they have made my make-up routine quicker, simpler and less of a fright show. As for the writing on the side of bottles I can neither see nor understand, 20/20 vision would help, but straightforward English in a larger font size would be even more useful.

So let’s all write letters of complaint. Has anyone seen my reading glasses?