Cannes 2-3

It is not difficult to scratch below the sun tanned surface and see the cracks beginning to show. Private beeches charging up to £20 a day to park your derrière on sand are filled with balding men approaching middle age, whose stomachs are bursting with years of decadent three course dining, accompanied by long legged girls who look a good deal younger and sound as though their entire education consisted of beauty at the local college. Whether this is a long term meeting of soul mates or the girls came as a bonus for frequent users I am unsure.

Silver haired ladies who are still striving for a golden tan long past their sell by date line the public beaches. Placing an accurate age on this particular group is almost impossible, sun damage has reduced the texture of their skin to a bulk buy box of rubber bands. What is so wrong with being pale and interesting? It is as if there was a town rule passed some time ago which stated no one is allowed to be white. You can be caramel, bright orange, the colour or tomato soup or raw meat, but never any colour that can be seen in nature without some serious genetically modified intervention.

Small white square elastoplasts kept appearing like a twisted dot to dot puzzle across the backs, arms and faces of glamorous thirty something’s. Despite my French being mainly limited to ordering alcohol, getting rid of French men and explaining medical emergencies thanks to my colourful snow boarding history I managed to piece together the puzzle by over hearing beachside conversations. The word malignant manages to cross languages, it would seem the recurring theme was mole removal due to skin cancer, but despite the obvious dangers to health, like junkies craving one more hit, these willing victims still lined up ready for their next fix of ultra violet, risking their youthful looks, elasticity of skin and even their lives. This was the first time I considered tanning to be a kind of addiction. Burroughs recollection of addiction...
“I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing”

When tanning becomes a necessity and daily occurrence, it can no longer be a leisure activity, or possibly I am just ever so slightly bitter and enviously that my leisure activities constitute someone else’s daily life.