If the mirror is to be believed, my complexion now resembles that of a dried beetroot. There is a searing pain every time I touch my burned forehead, which is drier than the Sahara, and sports a particularly tender patch right below my receding hairline.
Of course, the roof is playing up on my soft-top car. Probably because it’s barely turned a wheel since October last year, let alone any open-air action. And as I’ve been away for three days, I naturally returned to find the front lawn afflicted with an unsightly covering of clover.
We don’t cope terribly well with sunshine in this country do we?
Okay, we don’t cope that great with winter either. And I’m sure some of you will point out that at least some of these annoyances are self-inflicted. But mark my words. If it stays vaguely sunny for a couple of weeks, the Met Office will start issuing increasingly alarmist weather warnings, urging people to only travel to work ‘if your journey is necessary’. If the sunshine holds out for three weeks, the train operators will start talking about the ‘wrong type of sun’. And if we make it to August without a downpour, the calls for a hosepipe ban will be reaching fever pitch.
It’s not as if we don’t get the chance to plan for summer.
For nine months of the year, the weather is stubbornly underwhelming. The much vaunted ‘white Christmas’ is invariably grey, the green shoots of spring are usually overshadowed by the frosty mornings. If we have a couple of nice days in May, the global warming lot start getting the vapours. And then, come the end of June, the whole country is woefully under-prepared.
It also came as something of a surprise that a trip to the Welsh coast now takes the best part of three hours. I clearly recall how, in the days of Vauxhall Victors and Ford Consuls, and sat-nav of the paper-and-ink variety, you could comfortably get to Aberdovey in less than two. But of course, that was before the introduction of the default 20mph speed limit, which according to the Welsh Government’s website, will encourage people to consider walking or cycling instead. I guess that’s what they call progress.
So was it worth the bother? Oh yes, yes, and yes. Sitting atop the sand dunes at Ynyslas, even on a slightly hazy day, is a sight everybody should see at least once in their life. The village of Borth may not provide the marketing chiefs of Capri too many sleepless nights at the moment, but the sunset over its deserted beach would grace the cover of any world tourist guide. And is there anywhere, even across the whole of the Cote d’Azur, that is significantly prettier than a sun-kissed afternoon in Aberdovey?
And, if that’s not your thing, the postcard-beautiful village of Broadway is just an hour away, Bourton-on-the-Water 20 minutes further than that. Without the irksome speed limits.
And if that’s too far, why not while a few hours away beside the River Severn?
In fact, it’s hard to think of anywhere that doesn’t look beautiful in the sunshine. OK, one or two of our industrial areas might be a stretch, but even as I look out the window of our newsroom in the sky, even the solar panels and glass roofs of the generic shopping centre below have a certain poetry as the rays bounce off them.
The average man will see 77 summers in his lifetime, accounting for about 19 years and three months. And there are 86 days left of this one. I suggest you get out there and make the most of every single moment. Because when it’s gone, it really is gone.
Never mind the sunburn. I’m walking on sunshine.
