I was made for winter. I cannot take heat. I stick my feet outside the duvet all year round. I wear Birkenstock sandals through to December. Although I knit socks, I seldom wear them and I more often say "I am roasting" than "I am cold". My face glows red if the temperature gets above mild. This is now written off kindly as menopausal, but I have been doing this all my life.
Britain and Europe have been baking for the past couple of weeks. Around me, everyone is enjoying glorious sunshine. Colleagues are eating lunch in the park. I am searching for the shade. As one who lurks in the shadows covered up, I enjoy, vicariously, the joy that a sunny day brings.
For as long as I can remember, sunshine has equalled sunburn for me. Growing up, sun tan lotion was designed to maximise the effects of the sun, not protect us from them.
At about the age of 8, I was decanted to a caravan in Girvan for a week. I got so badly sun-burned that both shoulders developed huge bubble blisters. Mum applied calamine lotion and crepe bandages when I got home. Even now, though, I can remember the horrible feeling of the seams of my dress cutting at those weeping wounds. Calamine lotion, if you're not familiar with it, is a pink watery paste that dries on burned skin to give it a Sahara-like finish. It was a popular staple of 1970s medicine cabinets.
My search for SPF 50 began at about 18, when it was only really sold for babies, and was gunky, white, sun-and-people repellant goo. Suncreams have got better, but my tolerance for sun has not. My search for magic lotions and potions continues.
Last week, I was taken by something new in a chemist in Anstruther. Snake Brand prickly heat powder. I had never heard of the stuff, but I had to have that tin. It smells like vapour rub - and that's a good thing - and was developed in 1947 "to treat foreigners suffering heat rash from Thailand's hot and humid weather." Now available in Scotland in the East Neuk of Fife. Things are changing.
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