Give me sunshine

There are an awful lot of helicopters buzzing around, so I presume they must be Secret Service and news crews getting ready to cover the hoo ha of the Pope’s visit. I can’t say it’s making much of a material or spiritual difference to my life right now, apart from ensuring I stay below 14th Street as I reckon it’ll be chocka in the skyscraper-y part of town tomorrow.

I hate to rub it in, as I know London is grey, but it’s progressively getting warmer here: 21C today, with a scorching 25 planned for tomorrow. Altho, given the utterly schizophrenic nature of NYC weather, no doubt it’ll be freezing and pouring with rain by Sunday when I’ll want to be by the pool on the roof deck at Soho House.

I’m off for my first spray tan of the season this afternoon. I bought a mega package at EZ-Tanning on Fifth last summer, so they worked out at $10 a throw, a steal compared to £20 a pop in London, & I still have some left. Several girlfriends have been trying to convince me that my English Rose-ish complexion and skin look lovely as they are, but I just can’t be doing with looking like a bottle of blue-tinged skimmed milk.

Of course, I haven’t actually exposed my skin to the sun since, well never, as I had eczema as a child and was incredibly fair so beaches were anathema & I burnt to a crisp within about 30 seconds. I’ve always worn high factor SPF, hats and covered my shoulders and décolleté when outside and it’s paid off as I don’t have any wrinkles or crow’s feet yet.

To be honest tho, it wasn’t so much from vanity as from a combined fear of skin cancer (I’m in the highest risk group – Northern European blonde with moles & freckles), and the fact that I get sunstroke & keel over pretty rapidly without a hat. Also I am sure that I can hear my cellulite sizzling in the sun like bacon on a griddle.

Still, there is an element of idiocy in my decision to spray tan: dunking myself in all those chemicals when I eat organic and will choose paraben free moisturizers. I guess that’s the essentially dichotomous nature of the 21stC female.