Childhood: it's a wonderful thing, isn't it? Carefree days were spent booting a soccer ball around a field, afternoons were lost getting dizzy on Sunny D and schoolyard chat incessantly revolved around one question: "who loves orange soda?" Childhood was the best and there are certain smells that will always remind me of my yesteryears. Freshly cut grass that is still damp in the morning, the diesel-induced stench of overworked ice cream truck engines, and the smell of a brand new book.
As a child, I grew up in the era before the likes of tablets, smartphones and laptops. This meant that, for me at least, The Guinness Book of World Records was genuinely the most exciting thing to happen in the calendar year. Every year it would arrive, with its funky design on a hardback cover, and every year, without fail, I would buy it.
Opening up those pages was something that will live with me for eternity. That fresh book smell mentioned previously, the pure excitement of what this strange, bizarre bible would entail and, of course, looking at all the records and deciding which one I could possibly beat one day. There are certain records that will always live long in the memory; the man who smoked 159 cigarettes in one go, the highest pancake stack in the world and the world's largest pizza are all incredible in their own right, but it was the astonishing people that we were really looking for.
So, despite the fact that I may have moved on and adopted a laptop to do my research rather than a book, I am still obsessed with world records. In light of this, you can imagine my excitement when I saw that a woman has come forward to claim the title of having the longest eyelashes in the world.
Meet You Jianxia from Shanghai. She was born in 1968 and has a lash on her left eye-lid that measures in at 12.4 centimetres (4.88 inches).
Jianxia set the record in 2016 mean that, since we're in 2018, it's possible that her lashes have grown even more in the past few years.
So, what is the secret to Jianxia's lengthy lashes? Well, it's quite simple: she puts it down to "the life she leads at one with nature".
Yep, you heard me right, according to the woman, the lash came to prominence "during an 18-month nature retreat she embarked on in 2018."
So, if there's one thing to take away from all of this is that long lashes can be achieved with relative ease. If you're someone who happens to dabble in a bit of make-up and you're looking for a new technique in order to get your lashes on-fleek, I have a top tip for you: go camping.