Oops

eally really must get myself a hat. Or at least some sunscreen. Or maybe both. Or I could just be a bit more sensible about how much time I spend out in the sun… yeah, that might be a good idea too. Because I managed to get myself sunburnt again in my lunch break today (for those of you northern hemisphere types to whom getting sunburnt in the space of an hour’s lunch break seems unlikely, remember that hole in the ozone layer that everyone was panicking about in the early 90s?  Well, it still exists, and in the summer it sits pretty much right over NZ.  So our UV levels can get pretty nasty, and burn time is usually around 20 minutes.)
Normally if it’s a sunny day I sit safely in the shade, but the last couple of days have had a nice cool breeze, so it was just pleasantly warm in the sunshine, rather than intensely hot like it was at the weekend. So when I went out at lunchtime I thought I’d just sit in the sunshine for a few minutes then move into the shade, but I got caught up in my book and because I wasn’t getting too hot completely forgot I was sitting in full sunshine, and didn’t notice until about 40 minutes had passed, by which time I was getting nicely pink round the edges.  Especially on the back of my neck, which is feeling a bit stingy tonight.
Oh well, considering I grew up in the 70s when nobody had heard of skin cancer and parents sent you outside to get some sun because it was good for you, I had enough really bad sunburns as a kid that my melanoma risk is already pretty close to guaranteed – getting the odd little burn as an adult probably doesn’t even register.  Still, with all that experience of sunburn, you’d think I’d have learnt to avoid it by now…