Malone has sunburn

My document is entitled ‘blank’. I feel a bit ‘blank’. I’m so hot I’m actually sitting in the shade (I never do this, I stalk the sun, I’m like a crazed fan following it around usually). I’m so hot I’m even drinking cola without vodka in. Apparently I need to be kept ‘going’ at 11am. Last week I wrote about winter in July and now a week later I’m nursing my sunburn… My bikini dip has made the sunburn on my boobs look like I’m now presenting them to my lover in a white heart surrounded by hot pink. Except I’m like “don’t touch them!” to anyone who passes within two metres of my sunburnt chest. Yes, I didn’t apply suncream on my chest when I was out for two hours at the playground. What was I thinking…? I’d sprayed myself everywhere else and then must have stripped down to the bikini top, as an afterthought. HELLO idiot.

“I’m sporting the badge of ‘the surprised British resident with sun sprung on them’”

I’d been judging all the other idiots on the beach sporting terrible T-shirt burn (white shoulders and ‘ham pink’ arms) and now here I am sporting the badge of ‘the surprised British resident with sun sprung on them’.

Hey, I’ve got to stop talking about the weather as by the time you read this it might be snowing with rainbow sunny intervals. I remembered to cover the child in suncream so that’s the main thing, eh? She can actually apply it herself now. Though mostly she gets it in her eye. Then I spend six minutes being squealed at while I try to get it out of her eye without rubbing or touching the eye. “DON’T touch my eye, it hurts!” I spend six minutes rueing letting her be all responsible. How much responsibility is one supposed to dish out? The child wants to cook these days, I don’t think I started cooking until I was 11. I’m 39 and this week (apart from the sunburn) I have managed, whilst cooking, to single-handedly (literally; this was actually the problem, I should have used two hands and the double oven gloves…) to burn one hand, not once, but twice! I now have two burns turning into nice little scars on one hand. One scar is ‘sausages’ and one scar is ‘pizza’. I showed a handful of mums and they all lunged their hands into my face pointing ‘Chilli 1992’ and ‘Bolognese 2004’. Seems I’ve been lucky during my cooking career to go unscathed for so long. Well, there was the time I threw a steak into a pan of hot butter and oil, and oil splattered my whole face and I thought I was going to look like a measles case forever. Lavender came to my rescue that week; this time it doesn’t seem to be working. I will have to get to like scars ‘sausages’ and ‘pizza’. And as it’s summer, enjoy nice safe salads. Don’t let me near the BBQ…

Illustration: Jake McDonald www.shakeyillustrations.blogspot.com