Blast from the past...the days before sunblock

As I slathered Factor 50 sunblock onto my son’s face during the recent heatwave, the thick white gloop giving him the appearance of a mime artist, it got me thinking that I had never been subjected to this sticky, unpleasant, but of course, potentially life-saving ritual, during my own 1970s childhood. As a consequence, even though I am not Casper-white I often burned, and burned badly.

My mother’s remedy, like all mothers of her time, was to slather Calamine lotion on my lobster red bits, or, if we were out of the chalky liquid, she would literally butter me up, spreading Dromona over the third-degree scalding. Why? I have no idea.

Perhaps we didn’t know any better, but there was so much laxity when it came to sun protection and blithe indifference to sunburn, which was as much a part of summer as wasps, a day trip to Portrush and watching the tennis on TV.

I remember men adorning themselves with sunburn from neck to ears and fingertip to bicep, to create the much vaunted farmers’ tan - the international symbol of being from these parts and a weird badge of honour.

Women, hellbent on their annual nuking, greased themselves in baby oil or Crisp ‘n’ Dry in a misguided, self-sabotaging attempt to tan better. Instead of bronzed goddesses they looked like giant Clove Rock, with white strap marks on roaring red flesh.

My worst sunburn was when I was at a school sports day and got royally roasted. My skin was the colour of a rare steak and so hot an Ulster fry could’ve been cooked upon it.

Then it started to blister, big fat water-filled pustules. After some days it started to peel, followed an itch it was impossible to scratch.

After some research it turns out sunblock did exist in those days, although it may not have been up to much.

In the 1930s Scientist Eugène Schueller developed the first sunscreen, promising to protect skin without stopping tanning.

And thankfully we now know the dangers of searing ourselves into early graves just for the sake of a tan.

We know that just one dose of painful sunburn every two years can triple your risk of melanoma – the most deadly form of skin cancer. And that is never a good look.