Heatwaves hit different when you’re a redhead

Heatwave, anyone? As another warm weekend beckons, the Met Office has revealed that we experienced the hottest spring on record. But not everyone is cock-a-hoop at the nice weather.

Spare a thought for Britain’s gingers, who are usually well-prepped for the rigours of a British summer, but who now must stretch out our dependency on SPF50 and large, hideous hats through spring and autumn, with only the end of Strictly and the duration of The Traitors providing a guaranteed period of respite.

By “gingers” (a ghastly word, by the way, takes me straight back to being bullied at school), I do of course mean any redheads like me, blessed with a pallor that allows excellent camouflage in areas of Scotland and Ireland during high winter, and which is absolutely useless at any other time.

But I also include anyone else who struggles with the heat — spiritual gingers, if you will, like my friend Sonal, a former criminal barrister, who has established a cutting-edge skincare brand, This is Silk, inspired by how she treated her rare allergy to sunlight. I have been awash with suncream pretty much every day since 2005. Thankfully, the quality has risen dramatically since I was a baby, when my fair mother — partly raised in Singapore, where she and her sisters coated themselves in oil like so many jacket potatoes — would swipe me with factor two. This was considered unimaginably high in the early 1980s and quite akin to staying indoors and hiding under the bed til the clocks went back.

The only problem today is that cheap sunscreen tends to be horrendous on sensitive skin or leaves a very obvious cast, and the good stuff is wildly expensive and comes in tubes the size of a fun-size Snickers. To keep covered in the stuff to the level that I need costs me a fortune — and I do need it, as the alternative is to rapidly become lightheaded and wobbly. My solution is usually to stay inside for the majority of daylight hours and go out covered in hats, sunglasses and long sleeves where needed. Australia’s long-running awareness campaign, “Slip, Slap, Slop” remains very relevant, even if I spent much of my UK childhood wondering which one referred to “having an ice lolly”.

It’s simply not worth doing otherwise, either to get burned (which I can do in under a minute on high UV days) or to use a cheap and cheerful suncream and have the inevitable breakout or rash from trying to get my sensitive skin playing ball. My dad (equally redhead, but less pallid due to a love of sailing) has become a devotee of the excellent Altruist sun cream, which I keep forgetting to stock up on online. He and the rest of my family can tan really beautifully. I gave up even trying in my early twenties, and have concluded that a neat trick to appear less ghostly is to wear a screamingly-white bathing suit instead.

Conversely, my favourite hobby is very ginger-friendly. When I go horse riding, I relish the opportunity to cover up in gloves, a hat, boots, a long-sleeved summer base layer etc, all technically for protection should I fall into a tree. I went on a horsey travel assignment to India a few years ago and have never been more comfortable than riding through the Thar desert, swathed in layers.

Since I got my retriever, Sybil, I’ve had a companion slash excuse to hide away from the sunlight – it’s simply cruel to walk a dog when the pavement can be used to sizzle bacon, especially when said dog resembles a sheepskin rug from Ikea. When, in the record-breakingly hot summer of 2022, we both had serious operations within weeks of each other, it was something of a relief to be able to hide indoors to recover. It also gives me time to pray, pray, pray that someone with money and influence will turn their laser focus to sorting out the climate. Rather naively, I thought this conversation had already been settled during the greenhouse gas debate of the 1990s. If only this were something Blue Peter could rectify now through a campaign. Perhaps we could organise a Bring ‘n’ Buy Sale. I’ve got loads of sun cream I can bring along to keep everyone covered.