You know that feeling when something happens to you but you can’t fathom out how it happened. Like unexplained bruises on your arms when you cannot for the life of you remember bumping into anything. The sort of things that just don’t make sense.

Well, I had something similar recently.

In case you were wondering I’ve been away for a couple of weeks in Spain and, whilst having a nice time there, I have to say it was bloody hot. Too hot for this overweight article at any rate. But the thing is that it was a freebie holiday, staying in Paul’s apartment, and I knew before the plane had even taken to the skies that it was going to be hot.

I had a plan though, a simple yet effective one. For the duration of the holiday I would become a vampire and keep out of the Sun as much as possible. Did I manage that? In a word – NO!

The first day went really well. I sat on the balcony during the day, enjoying the sunshine from the shade and drinking rioja. It was most pleasant. In the evening, after the worst of the heat, we went down to the sea front where I bought a stylish yet sensible hat, some mirror shades and had a couple of beers. Day one, therefore, successful.

It all went pear shaped on day two.

It was a cloudless sky that we awoke to on the Thursday and it was decided by the majority that a day by the pool would be a nice thing to do. I ummed and aahed about this but was assured by Becky that there was adequate shade and that I could stay well within the confines of it.

You can see where this is heading, can’t you?

To keep it brief, I stayed in the shade all day, venturing out only twice to nip to the toilet, and at the end of the day I was as red as baboon’s backside. Redder in fact!

Surely 30 seconds each way to the toilet and back twice wasn’t enough exposure to turn me into Stevenson Thermador!

Or is it?

I don’t know but I wouldn’t have thought so. Or did I hugely underestimate the old Currant Bun? Is that all it takes for me to burn these days? Because I cannot think how else it could have happened. I stayed under an umbrella virtually the whole time.

By early evening I positively reeked of after sun lotion (Nivea – only the best) and I looked awful because I even had the panda eyes from my sunglasses. How? Will someone pleased tell me how.

I slept abominably that night and spent Friday inside the apartment feeling sorry for myself, drinking only bottled water and shunning alcohol. It was bad gentle reader, real bad!

Thankfully it began to calm down by late Saturday and I was feeling a lot less self-conscious to the point where I felt able to go to a nice restaurant and enjoy a good meal. Incidentally, the gazpacho was to die for. Seriously. And the swordfish steak was an unadulterated joy to the tastebuds.

But I digress.

We’ve been home about 5 days now and I have to say that my exposed portions are not looking too bad at all. Dare I even suggest that they are a (somewhat wishy-washy looking) brown. But at the end of the day I have to ask myself the question – was it worth the pain, heat, dryness, and tightness that my body had to withstand just to be vaguely beige at the end of it? No, it most certainly was not.

So there you have it. My battle with the Spanish sunshine; which I lost heavily. But I’m still at a loss as to how a literal two-minute burst of exposure at thirty second intervals could inflict so much redness and discomfiture. It doesn’t make any sense to yours truly.

I mean, for one thing, it’s the very self-same Sun that we have here in Britain and I have gone whole summers in the UK without even a hint of pinkness to my expansive body. No, not even a light hue.

I was told before I went that it was a different kind of heat to what we get over here. Well, all I can say is – no truer words ever spoken.

Anyway, its done with now and I’m cracking on with the next novel. If only the bloody peeling and itching would stop now.