I'm probably the only person I know who comes back from any holiday actually paler than before I went. I could offer all sorts of explanations (mostly, and correctly, to do with my lavish use of factor 1000 sunscreen) but I prefer to think of it as an "anti-tan" - the hotter the place I go to, the more the sun bleaches me. Possibly, by my own argument, if I spent a week or two in the Arctic Circle over winter I might develop a tan. Stranger things have happened.
Not hugely pale this time, as most of my sun exposure took place in northern France (see sidebar ONE MORE TIME before I take it down with a sigh of regret) and was just a fleeting but celebratory weekend's worth before returning to rainy Blighty. After which I spent a blissful week doing precisely nil, apart from visiting family and reading books* and stuffing my face with the food we had brought back from Rouen**. Am now back at work - and will write something worth reading in a day or two.
* "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson - a housebrick of a Swedish crime thriller but very, very worth reading. Dark, complex, and scary.
"When Will There Be Good News" by Kate Atkinson - one of the perks of working in a bookshop is the availability of proof copies. This is a sequel to her two previous Jackson Brodie novels and worth waiting for.
"Ten-Second Staircase" by Christopher Fowler - I got cross with him a few years ago for rewriting his mad lunatic-genius novel "Darkest Day" (now unavailable) into a rather more ho-hum format to fit the Waterstones-friendly crime series cliché- but this was original, and a goodie.
**walnut bread, garlic sausage, smoked sausage, goat's cheese, ham, duck confit, brief pause while I let belt out a notch or two, Roquefort, purée de marrons, unsalted butter, further brief pause while I lie down.
4 comments:
Welcome back. I always avoid the tan whenever possible too.
I'm a big Kate Atkinson fan, so looking forward to her new one (though I might not have read her last one yet, now I come to think about it.) I've heard many good things about that Dragon Tattoo book though, so that's on my list too.
The curse of the ginge! Not you, obviously. Still, I'm hoping to look teenaged when I'm in my 50s due to heavy sunblock usage. Dragon Tattoo is great - and tragic, because the author died shortly before publication (he had written the whole trilogy and just landed a German publishing deal).
I always make a point of trying to return from a holiday far more pale and interesting than when I left... good for you!
Steve- I wish I could say I did it on purpose...
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