One result of the gas blast . . your wrinkles have gone!

A PENSIONER who survived a gas explosion which destroyed her home is said to look "ten years younger" as a consequence of the blast.

Molly Hastie, 86, was making a cup of tea when her Uphall home exploded, leaving the pensioner with burns to her hand and face and almost crushing husband Frank, 87, beneath a falling wall.

The couple are now recovering well in sheltered accommodation in Broxburn and son Frank Jr, 57, said his mother's injuries have had an unexpected side effect.

He said: "Without making too light of the matter, my mum now looks ten years younger because the burns on her face caused the top layers of skin to fall off, along with most of her wrinkles. Her hands are still suffering. The doctors were thinking about doing plastic surgery because there is a hole in her wrist which has turned very blue, and you can almost see through her hand and wrist."

He described his mother's state of mind as "chirpy" despite her injuries, but said his father was still struggling to come to terms with what happened.

He added: "For the first two to three weeks my dad was the stalwart of the family. He was the person my mum turned to for reassurance and kept her going, but now that it's all over with he's gone into a bit of a regression. He's been getting mental flashbacks about what happened to the two of them."

The exact cause of the blast is still a mystery, but Frank Jr was able to shed further light on the circumstances that led up to the May 29 explosion on Loaninghall Road.

He said: "My mum remembers the morning it happened very well. She is a woman of habit. She doesn't use the gas cooker in the morning, so the first thing she did was go in and put the kettle on, then she walked through to the living room to put the gas fire on which lit up fine, and then when the kettle clicked off that's when the explosion happened.

"We've not really heard anything about (the cause of the explosion]. It's still in the hands of the insurance company, but I don't know if we'll ever get to hear the final word on it."

He said there were reports from neighbours that they smelled gas around the area the week before the explosion.

"My mum's got a very keen sense of smell and you would have thought she could have smelled the gas," he said.

"The health and safety people initially said they wanted to do a forensic examination of the gas fire, the gas cooker and the gas meter, but when they demolished the house everything was dumped in the back of a huge lorry."