I'm often amused when I see schoolchildren here in the Far Future. It's the uniforms with floppy broad-brimmed hats and light, loose, long sleeves, and faces shimmering with youth and multiple coats of SPF 50+. Not a square centimetre of open school ground goes without shade provided by some kind of awning.
In the Distant Past, where I come from, we're not a sun-smart, hat-wearing people. Certainly not the children, with the exception of those attending the more expensive private schools. Even those hats tend to be neat little bonnets or straw boaters, worn as markers of social status rather than for their utility.
The first and last weeks of the school year, either side of the summer holidays, are fraught with danger over and above the usual perils. The community's dogs, reluctant to relinquish the company of their playmates, happily trot to school behind them. Never having seen a leash, nor any particularly earnest attempt at fencing, our dogs in the Distant Past enjoy an easy latitude that dogs here in the Far Future would envy. Consequently humans tread with care when out on the street, while dogs gambol about in the baking summer air in a spirit of carefree idiot anarchy, floppy ears ringing to the sound of cicadas.
On arrival at school, the dogs sort themselves into packs and gleefully yelp, growl, and tussle amongst themselves until they happen to notice a student who has unwisely strayed too far from the herd. The animals instantly fall to order, forming a frighteningly huge gestalt beast which charges out of the heat haze to take down the child with ruthless efficiency.
Once the tarmac playground is up to the desired temperature, which can be assessed by it's glistening sheen and gentle hissing, morning assembly is called. Children form haphazard, short-sleeved ranks in the blistering sunshine, not a hat to be seen, and no topical skin protection beyond the odd smear of breakfast Vegemite.
In the yard's only patch of shade, a teacher steps up onto a bench seat to begin proceedings with the traditional declaration that they don't like being out here any more than anyone else, so the sooner everybody is settled, the sooner they can all be done and get indoors. One child, the first of several over the course of that morning's assembly, passes out from heat stroke.
When I was at school, I was often spared a week or two of this, as our family would generally vacation at that time of year, on the assumption that no significant amount of education would be possible, much less attempted, at these temperatures. Also coastal holiday towns were less crowded, and much cheaper, than during the formally-declared school holidays.
Educated opinion in the Distant Past is divided on the best approach to dealing with the inevitability of sunburn during a holiday. One school of thought says that it is best to get the damage over and done with in the first few days, in order to thereafter revel in the protective insulation of a robust layer of dying skin cells. Another recommends simply avoiding direct sunlight as far as possible, which is not very far when faced with a beach full of interesting stones and shells, and promising sites for digging holes.
I have the sort of skin designed for latitudes where, even in summer, a weak and diffident sun modestly hews quite close to the horizon, so neither strategy is of much use to me. I quickly burn and then painfully slowly just revert back to my customary shade of blue-grey.
Sunscreen is eschewed by all but the most dedicated beachgoer, and is usually deployed as a thick strip of white zinc cream across the nose, standing out boldly against an otherwise uniformly nut-brown complexion, marking one out as either a proficient surfer or a professional lifesaver, or at the very least someone willing to have a good hearty go at resuscitation, having seen it done on television. Or else it is an open admission of being a sickly and cossetted child, probably about to mislay an asthma inhaler, or insulin, or some other frivolous hypochondriac's accessory.
Even years after moving house to the Far Future, I still have difficulty applying anything icky to my skin. I can only bring myself to use moisturiser because I know that if I don't my face will resemble crepe paper loosely and inexpertly wrapped around a large, irregularly shaped, and poorly chosen gift.
I often see perfectly normal-looking people in the supermarket brazenly shopping for sunscreen with no more visible indication of embarrassment than if they were you or I further up the aisle innocently picking out novelty textured prophylactics or fruit flavoured personal lubricant. Yet still I find it a bridge too far. Which is how I came to be utterly defenceless last weekend.
I'm still finding my way around Melbourne after a year and a half, and have barely ventured outside my inner-city comfort zone. I had read an article recently which described the suburb of Footscray as seedy and resistant to gentrification. As that precise description also perfectly fits yours truly, I could hardly resist. I also saw that the coastal suburb of Williamstown lies due south of Footscray, with the area between them bounded to the West and East by the railway line and the Yarra River respectively, so I could take the train to Williamstown and walk North to Footscray with no chance of getting badly lost. Throw in a refreshment stop at a pub or two, and it sounded like a splendid way to spend an afternoon.
Williamstown is indeed as charming as billy-oh. Points North rather less so. The underside of West Gate Bridge is strikingly imposing in a Star Wars kind of way. However once you've staggered over unpaved ground past your third oil terminal in a row, alongside six lanes of roaring traffic, the scenery does become grimly predictable. Newport and Spotswood appear to be nice places to dump an unwanted mattress on the kerb, but you wouldn't want to live there. A sign pointing the way to Yarraville railway station signalled my imminent surrender. My thigh muscles were screaming, I needed to powder my nose, the only pub I'd passed in the last hour was closed, and something was making me feel like I'd spent too long fossicking for seashells. Footscray will have to wait. I needed to get back to civilisation and lie down.
I was wearing a very low-cut top because, by old lady standards, I look unbelievably sexy in it. A week later I still have a perfectly clear negative image of the low cut of that top, plus the necklace I was wearing, in livid crimson on my chest. My nose is a similar colour, in a way that summons to mind W.C. Fields, or Karl Malden. Not in a sexy way. Not even by old lady standards.
Lesson learned. Never venture more than ten kilometres from a postcode with three consecutive zeroes. And keep away from anywhere that promises fresh air and sunlight. Here be dragons.
