Friday 9 May 2008

Sunburn Stupidity

It turns out that yesterdays lunchtime picnic in the park was not as good an idea as it seemed. Foolishly I was ruled by my rumbling tummy and decided to eat lunch before buying suntan lotion. Clearly I'm stupid. Being a redhead I usually ALWAYS wear suntan lotion. Luckily I tan fairly easily for someone so fair, even wearing factor 30 and trying to stay out of the sun, so I thought that 20 minutes wouldn't be too bad. Needless to say halfway through the evening I realised that my shoulders were bright red and getting more and more sore. Thankfully almost half a bottle of moisturiser seems to have sorted them out and they're brown today but that doesn't change the irreparable damage I've done to my skin. I decided to cover up with a kaftan-like thing today. However it seems like the weather got there before me and has covered up with clouds.

As I usually take good care to cover-up with both material and sunscreen I get through bottles of suntan lotion each year. It never fails to shock me how expensive the stuff is. £12.99 a bottle! Granted it was buy 1 get 1 free so that worked out at around £6.50 a bottle but that's still a lot of money. It surprises me that with so many campaigns stressing the importance of sun protection, it is still so expensive. I have to be perfectly honest that when I saw the price yesterday I thought "£12.99... I could go to Wagamama and gorge myself on noodles and diet coke for less than that..." and considered not buying any. Thankfully I did or I'd be condemned to a summer of unbearable sunburn related pain, hugely increasing my risk of skin cancer and getting wrinkles. I guess I could just stop moaning about how much it costs and only leave the house under the cover of darkness. Like a vampire. A vitamin D deficient vampire. Do vampires need vitamin D?

1 comment:

Lollipop xx said...

I too am completely appalled by the cost of sunscreen. I, although not a redhead, have the skin of one, and will burn if I so much as look out a window. Factor 30+ is a must for walking round the corner to buy milk. So 12 pounds a bottle on my poor student budget is very upsetting!

Thanks for the good luck, it went fairly terribly but was made up for by a few drinks with course friends afterwards. Hope your exams are better!