Reasons I Should Never Be Allowed on a Beach

I love beaches as much as the next sun seeking city dweller but for some reason my genetic make-up has decided that beaches and I should not mix. Here are a few of the reasons I am at war with those sandy shores.

• They should create a new term for my skin colour. I’d go with ‘transparent’. In fact if you turn my arms over they are so transparent that they appear blue. I’m kind of like a partially invisible Smurf.
• The sun and I are at war. The sun and I have a relationship reminiscent of a hungry mosquito and a camper. I desperately try to get near to it and it uses every measure possible to beat me down. My tanning process is this: I think about the sun, I burn and then I flake back to , if its possible, a even whiter shade of pale. The only way I tan is if all my freckles join up to form the illusion of milky beige skin tone. I’m the David Copperfield of skin pigment.
• If MAC were to name a lipstick shade after my skin at the height of it’s tanning potential it would be ‘dull milky tea’…..English not green.
• I’m clumsy – In movies clumsy girls are cute, dainty balls of excitement that playfully fall into the leading mans arms, and ultimately his heart. In real life clumsy people are annoying and dangerous to be around. Lee has decided I can’t go a day without my daily tripping on nothing. This all accumulates on the beach to mean every step in the sand almost ends in a face-plant. In animation we learn that the action of walking is a serious of small falls. My brain seems to take this statement very literally.
• I’m not graceful in any way shape or form. Due to my constant aforementioned clumsiness, ‘Audrey Hepburn style’ elegance has never been obtainable for me. On the beach you are confronted with rows and rows of stunning gazelle like ladies who make Pamela Anderson’s Baywatch years look like a fat kid running a 3 legged race with his short-sighted friend. These woman effortlessly lay/move/prance on the beach like goddesses. When I emerge from the sea I am covered in green algae with my hair plastered on my face, with a cough representing a TB riddled cowboy. Halle Berry I ain’t.

Please don’t read this list and think I am sad about any of these things, on the contrary, after almost 29 years I wear these differences with pride. It’s quite freeing. I can’t imagine the pressure on the glistening, mostly Swedish beach goddesses. I throw a scraggly batman one piece swimsuit on and cover myself from head to toe in towels with a sense of pride. I love the beach and like a psycho ex I will definitely keep calling in on it long after it wants me around.
As I write this I’m un-sunning myself under a parasol on Boracay, which as beaches go is pretty beautiful – the 378 sellers that have approached Lee and I today for selfie sticks, Mary stone statues and island tours – not so much (sounds like I’m exaggerating the number but I’m probably under selling it) . But, not even they can distract from this view.
For now the beach is stuck with me, i’ll just be viewing it from under hotel parasols, much nicer than my own. If I have to buy copious amounts of happy hour 20p cocktails to do it, so be it.
Via La Beach