Tanfastic Mrs Fox

Here's a tale about vanity and one girl's transition from lowest of the low maintenance to High maintenance diva back to an even lower form of maintenance, via a nasty case of streaky-bacon-itis and a incident with a Brillo pad.

It's a short one, but I thought I'd build it up as much as possible to disguise the weakness of this story.

As you all know some weeks ago I decided to tan myself up and so I purchased a vat of Holiday Skin Moisturiser and got slapping, after a week I was a wonderful shade of Marsh, the love child of George Hamilton and a giant baked bean, and other various analogies of very brown things.

I looked hot. I was no longer an ageing goth, a milk bottle girl, and other various analogies of very white things. I was tanned!

Yeah, and then I went orange and reality kicked me square in the groin. People worriedly asked me if I was still going to continue tanning but the crunch came when one of the kids at work referred to me as Oompa Loompa. The truth hurts folks, let me tell you.

So I stopped using it. Three days into cold turkey and my face still had an orange border and my neck was still an off shade of orangey/dirt colour. My body was blotchy and people walked a good distance behind me for fear of contracting the lurgy.

Vanity does not suit me. I may have begun this journey whiter than white, but I think someone is trying to tell me that I belong this colour. Two weeks as a beautiful brown berry is all very well, but when you carry with you a faint waft of cooking fat and then start to develop what looks like a degenerative skin disease, something's got to give.

After an hour in the bath yesterday with a Brillo-esque exfoliating mitt I am even whiter than before and proud of it.

Someone even commented I look better this way.

So that was my first and probably last foray into the beach goddess' world. I think I'll sit here on the outskirts in a big floppy hat and avoid the rays. Dita Von Teese is the way forward.