Lobster Boy

I got myself nice and sunburnt on the weekend, which was an essential part of my Australian re-integration plans. Two and a half years in Canada made me forget that lying in the direct sun on Bronte beach for an hour, followed by a couple more hours of street shopping and wandering about is a really bad idea for someone with my Celtic skin type. In Vancouver and London, you just don't worry about it. The only time you need to break out the suncream there is when it's the sunniest day of the year, and you're working for twelve hours under a giant magnifying glass stark naked. If you're blessed with dark or olive skin, you've got a much larger margin of safety in the Australian sun, and a much shorter recovery time. It's really quite unfair when others get just as sizzled as I do, but the next day their red is replaced with a smooth tanned brown, while my red continues to blaze bright enough to be seen from Neptune's orbit.

There are many weapons in a paleface's arsenal to thwart the marauding Australian daystar: sunscreen, a hat, a long sleeved shirt and even a giant tinted glass bubble enclosing the entire city. Naturally I neglected all of these on the weekend, and now I'm paying the price. Aloe vera gel is a godsend for soothing the post-burn sting, but be aware that it is sticky, and can act as an adhesive between one's clothing and epidermis. This is not a good thing, and can result in wild screaming that gives the cat (and possibly the neighbours, depending on their age bracket) a mild heart attack.