(This should have been posted yesterday, but apparently my laptop pays as much attention to me as Stephi does. That is to say that they're both perfectly ambivalent unless I dangle food in front of them. Stephi noms; my laptop eats its own data in protest.)
Well, today was the first real break from rain across London. Yesterday didn't really count, as it wasn't exactly blue skies across the board; no, today is the first real break.
I'm almost missing the rain.
Well, I'd miss the rain on any day, but the cool calm of a summer rain would be a lovely break from all this sunshine. Yes, how very English: When it rains, as much as we are used to it, we complain until the cows come home, go back out the next day, get equally as drenched, and still we somehow never expect it. But a whole day of sun is far too much for us. The first half of the day is fine: Children frolic on clover-strewn lawns. Happy little families stroll past reclining figures in garden chairs, most of whom don mock-Californian fashions of wide-brimmed white hats and sunglasses bigger than their faces. Dogs chase cheerfully after badly-aimed frisbees. Cars gather dust.
By mid-afternoon, the children are bored and sit in tangled piles in front of TV sets showing reruns of soaps from the last week. Somewhat tanned but mostly sun-burned Britons gingerly rub aftersun lotion onto tender flesh. Dogs lie lazily in the shade and the hosepipe ban is cursed and ignored a thousand times over before dinner.
That is how London deals with the sun.
My own adventures with the somewhat unexpected sun are not so far from that, in all honesty, but it's another everyday adventure none-the-less.
I had an absolutely excruciating night, most of which I spent either writhing in agony in bed or hunched over the toilet bowl. I hovered between being afraid I might throw up and being afraid I might not.
This is the shape my migraines usually take.
At the encouragement of my dad, I spent the day sitting in the garden. Anyone who happens to know me will also know that, besides spontaneously painting my room neon pink or declaring a deep-seated and long-running hatred for tea, this is the one thing I am probably most unlikely to do. This is partly due to my migraines, where light usually only serves to make them worse (I'm not trying to complain or over-state my migraines, but I get them quite often and they've been bad enough before for me to consider drastic measures to end the pain. Not fun). Anyway, I was sitting curled up with my book as comfortably as I could be in a plastic garden chair, in full view of the sun. This was my first mistake. The next was actually turning my chair as the sun moved so that, on the off-chance that I did happen to start tanning, it would happen relatively evenly. I usually don't tan very much, a point my dad likes to mention whenever he tries to convince my sister that tanning is a good thing. When my dad mentioned I was looking a little darker, I was surprised, but didn't think much of it besides that. What my dad had neglected to mention was that by "darker" he meant "bright red". Five minutes later, I'm staring at the reflection of my raw, reddened skin in the hallway mirror. Unlike so many tales I've heard of holidays gone wrong, my sunburn doesn't hurt. In fact, the skin almost feels normal, besides a very soft tingling as I frantically rub four different aftersun lotions into my thighs, shoulders and chest. After some general poking, prodding and complaining, I then, very intelligently, proceed to have dinner outside, then play cards, in the still-baking sun, and get just that little bit more crisped up than I already was. Add to this that one of the aftersun lotions I used smells strongly of herbs and I'm a ready-to-go Sunday roast.
Yes, that was all incredibly stupid of me. Luckily, this human crisp isn't experiencing all the pain that supposedly comes with sunburn this bad (and yeah, it's pretty bad on my shoulders and worst on my legs) and it's already started fading a little on the sides, but it is a warning. Sitting out in the sun when you've barely seen any in three years is never a good idea. I won't be taking sunshine in England so lightly again, and hopefully I'll be much more my usual skin tone and less that of a lobster relatively soon. And while I've been reminded of it, allow me to spam you with a piece of awesome I hope you appreciate:
In the meantime, I'm off to put on more aftersun. Later! :3
~ Ryan
Current Favourite Food: Blueberries and iced watermelon.
Well, today was the first real break from rain across London. Yesterday didn't really count, as it wasn't exactly blue skies across the board; no, today is the first real break.
I'm almost missing the rain.
Well, I'd miss the rain on any day, but the cool calm of a summer rain would be a lovely break from all this sunshine. Yes, how very English: When it rains, as much as we are used to it, we complain until the cows come home, go back out the next day, get equally as drenched, and still we somehow never expect it. But a whole day of sun is far too much for us. The first half of the day is fine: Children frolic on clover-strewn lawns. Happy little families stroll past reclining figures in garden chairs, most of whom don mock-Californian fashions of wide-brimmed white hats and sunglasses bigger than their faces. Dogs chase cheerfully after badly-aimed frisbees. Cars gather dust.
By mid-afternoon, the children are bored and sit in tangled piles in front of TV sets showing reruns of soaps from the last week. Somewhat tanned but mostly sun-burned Britons gingerly rub aftersun lotion onto tender flesh. Dogs lie lazily in the shade and the hosepipe ban is cursed and ignored a thousand times over before dinner.
That is how London deals with the sun.
My own adventures with the somewhat unexpected sun are not so far from that, in all honesty, but it's another everyday adventure none-the-less.
I had an absolutely excruciating night, most of which I spent either writhing in agony in bed or hunched over the toilet bowl. I hovered between being afraid I might throw up and being afraid I might not.
This is the shape my migraines usually take.
At the encouragement of my dad, I spent the day sitting in the garden. Anyone who happens to know me will also know that, besides spontaneously painting my room neon pink or declaring a deep-seated and long-running hatred for tea, this is the one thing I am probably most unlikely to do. This is partly due to my migraines, where light usually only serves to make them worse (I'm not trying to complain or over-state my migraines, but I get them quite often and they've been bad enough before for me to consider drastic measures to end the pain. Not fun). Anyway, I was sitting curled up with my book as comfortably as I could be in a plastic garden chair, in full view of the sun. This was my first mistake. The next was actually turning my chair as the sun moved so that, on the off-chance that I did happen to start tanning, it would happen relatively evenly. I usually don't tan very much, a point my dad likes to mention whenever he tries to convince my sister that tanning is a good thing. When my dad mentioned I was looking a little darker, I was surprised, but didn't think much of it besides that. What my dad had neglected to mention was that by "darker" he meant "bright red". Five minutes later, I'm staring at the reflection of my raw, reddened skin in the hallway mirror. Unlike so many tales I've heard of holidays gone wrong, my sunburn doesn't hurt. In fact, the skin almost feels normal, besides a very soft tingling as I frantically rub four different aftersun lotions into my thighs, shoulders and chest. After some general poking, prodding and complaining, I then, very intelligently, proceed to have dinner outside, then play cards, in the still-baking sun, and get just that little bit more crisped up than I already was. Add to this that one of the aftersun lotions I used smells strongly of herbs and I'm a ready-to-go Sunday roast.
Yes, that was all incredibly stupid of me. Luckily, this human crisp isn't experiencing all the pain that supposedly comes with sunburn this bad (and yeah, it's pretty bad on my shoulders and worst on my legs) and it's already started fading a little on the sides, but it is a warning. Sitting out in the sun when you've barely seen any in three years is never a good idea. I won't be taking sunshine in England so lightly again, and hopefully I'll be much more my usual skin tone and less that of a lobster relatively soon. And while I've been reminded of it, allow me to spam you with a piece of awesome I hope you appreciate:
In the meantime, I'm off to put on more aftersun. Later! :3
~ Ryan
Current Favourite Food: Blueberries and iced watermelon.
