Sun, surf, sea and stupid Banana Boat

Today, Slinky was a stupid kitty.

I met up with the Space Cadet for our traditional day on the beach, which happens whenever she's back in town. Normally, we sit at the beach the entire day while the Space Cadet tries to gain back the natural tan which has leached out of her skin due to the subzero European winters while I slather on sunscreen with an SPF of 130 to make sure that I don't have to change my damned makeup. I tan easily.

This time around the Space Cadet goes to buy suntan oil to facilitate the browning process.

"Which one should I get? Dark tanning oil with SPF4 or the protective tanning oil with SPF?"

Note: the terms 'protective' and 'SPF8' dont go together. The sun we get here spits on SPF8. It ebats it up and then ties it to a mophead and usesit to soak up spills on it's flaming kitchen floor. SPF8 is NOTHING. I know this. So I must ahve been temporarily insane to say what I said next.

"Well, you want to max out your tan, right? So go for the dark tanning oil with the lower SPF," I say. Oh, fateful last words. In my defence, the weather was cloudy and I thought that she should maximize whatever sun we could catch.

This is part one of the Stupidity of Slinky.

Part two unfolds like the Shakespeare pastoral comedies where you know the girl who’s dressed as a guy who's dressed as a girl will get the guy in the end after what was supposed to be some hilarious verses heavy on the forsooths.

We are sitting on the beach, togged out in our little string bikinis. Slinky is feeling very fine because she is terribly chuffed by the new white bikini edged with hot pink paired with the red string bikini bottom. That's it. It was the temporary insanity caused by the wholly unjustified belief that what you are wearing is the bomb which caused me to say what I did next.

"Hey, let me try that," I tell the Space Cadet.

If this were a movie the ominous screechy music indicating impending horror and fear would have started, and my finger would have filled the screen, uncurling in slow motion before the camera panned with dreadful, portentous slowness to the bottle of Banana Boat Dark Tanning Oil.

Right then, the sun came out behind the clouds it was lurking behind, where it had been waiting just for this precise moment.

Kiddies, ignore everything I have said about life being short and trying everything once. I am an idiot. Some things should just be left the hell alone, like sacrificing babies and drinking fermented yak's milk.

Seven hours, many many kinky FHM shots and two liberal applications of the evil tanning oil later, Slinky says to the Space Cadet, "Wow, I'm tanned!"

Oooohhhh the hubris.

It is perhaps the niggling idea that perhaps all was not well in the world of Slinky that when I get on the bus to go back I plonk myself right next to the FBF, whom I have not seen since the shit hi the fan. I actually looked right at him but completely failed to register, probably because my subconscious was yelling urgent messages about impending grevious pain. It wasn't until I sat less than an arms length away from him that it suddenly clicked that hey, that face was familiar....

Oh, and he was with someone who wasn't Pinky. And holding her hand.

But I'm sure it was entirely innocent. Really.

Three hours after my best performance as Oblivious-To-Your-Existence to date, I look in the mirror and realize that I know exactly where my bikini began and ended, right down to where the knots and ribbons on my halter top were. And that I am beginning to, in true festive spirit, resemble a drunken prawn. I frantically enlist the help of my sister to slather on aloe vera with lidocaine in vast quantities over my barbecued back. The fact that this is also made by Banana Boat is an irony that does not escape me.

"Oh my god, what did you do?" my sister asks.

I am too embarrassed to tell her about the desertion of my sanity.

Five hours after that I sit here in just a T-shirt, slathered from neck to hips in aloe vera and feeling my skin beginning ominously to crackle like parchment paper and radiating heat like a furnace stove. Voila. Slinky briquette.

OW.

This is my excuse for the fact that I drank one Bangkok Martini and one Snowball with the Former Male Model, who talked to me about life and has given me the best advice in the most concise form so far, and with whom I had the most disconcerting Moment.

I will miss this.

One week left.