HOW is your summer going? I am frazzled. Quite literally. I am horrified to say that I have managed to get badly sunburned for the first time in years.
While usually super diligent about applying Factor 50 and wearing my Vera Stanhope-style hat for pottering outside, there came a momentary slip last weekend when I allowed myself to be tricked by beguiling cloud cover.
My forehead took on a shade best described as “atomic red”. Let’s just say that if I stood in a line-up of post boxes you would have struggled to pick me out. Initially, I told myself in the dim light of the bathroom, it wasn’t too bad – then it blistered and scabbed over.
The next day, perhaps momentarily blinded by the glare from my own forehead, I clattered into a low-hanging tree branch while out with the dog – this left a raw, vivid scratch.
Throw in a smattering of midge bites (hey, there’s no party without those biting fiends) and the overall effect became overripe tomato meets bumpy-browed Klingon.
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I continued to convince myself it wasn’t that terrible until I jumped onto a Zoom call on Monday morning – or as I now like to think of it: a truth mirror – only to realise that, nope, I looked ridiculous.
This is the same sight that greeted tennis player Jamie Murray on said Zoom call who, if he noticed my eyes popping out like a skittish cartoon character when I clocked my Day-Glo forehead on the screen, was polite enough not to mention it.
Besides, he had more far important things on his mind – such as Wimbledon – and we had a nice chat (you can read my interview with the delightful Mr Murray in The Herald Magazine on Saturday).
Any further delusions that my forehead wasn’t as garish as I feared were again shattered when I was putting the bins out and a passing neighbour – even from two metres away – winced as he sagely observed: “That looks a sore one, hen.”
So much for my hot girl summer – a phrase coined by the US rapper Megan Thee Stallion that has spawned countless memes, created a social media buzz and been adopted as a mantra to throw off the fug of lockdown.
The definition of hot girl summer is open to debate. Megan Thee Stallion described it as “being unapologetically you, having fun, being confident, living your truth, being the life of the party”. But everyone seems to be making up their own versions.
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Mine is less about picturing myself dancing on a yacht in a string bikini and more about hitting the bedding plants aisle at the garden centre or rustling up slushy frozen margaritas in my kitchen blender. Good times.
Thankfully, with every passing day, the retina-searing hue of my forehead is fading and gradually looking more akin to a dot-to-dot puzzle. If I squint my eyes, I can just about make out a pattern that resembles a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. It is healing. Lesson learned.
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