h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

September is upon us.

Nights are drawing in. I get up before the sun. The birds are quiet at dawn, then they mob the feeding station. Apples are red. Plums are done. The heather is in flower. Leaves are falling.

Oh, and I pay my daily respects to Mars as I head for bed.

It's still hot and dry as I write this. But rain, wind and cool temperatures are on the way: according to the BBC weatherman at least. The extraordinary summer weather has resulted in everything ending early this year: anything that fruits is almost done. I've begun to strip bean and pea plants, clear veg beds and dig them over for the winter frosts to penetrate the soil. The fruit trees need picking too: apples and pears are ready for storage.

The heat has reduced the need for many clothes: what bliss. It has put me in mind of my years in the Australian tropics, where clothes were worn to cover up the bits of the body that are socially unacceptable. At home and on the ocean, there was no need for clothes. Rather than make me sad about those days passed, the Scottish heat of 2003 has resulted in a conviction that I shall return: as soon as possible. I felt a lightness of spirit, a freedom of mind and a soothing contentedness that I simply do not experience when it's cool and I'm encased in clothes.

So now I shall study my finances, look at costs, think about how to earn enough once I'm there... and dream a few dreams.

Life's not too shabby.

In the meantime, there's apples to be harvested. Now where's the step-ladder?

Frenchbean

Where I live it would be nigh on impossible to go naturist, although I remember with some affection a holiday many years ago spend on a naturist reserve in the South of France. If we ever went off camp, as soon as we got back within the perimeter, off came the clothes.

Your journal sounds very lyrical!

Thanks ZSF!

I don't think I've ever been called lyrical before.

I'm not very good at communal naturism with people I don't know but I do sunbake naked in my garden, which is surrounded by countryside. I'm sure the odd farmer gets a thrill! There is something very liberating about it. I have great empathy with the naked rambler. Mind you, I'd not want to do that in a normal UK summer!


F/b

The Sun is good for your heart. Literally. The body makes its Vitamin D from "bad" cholesterol. The benefit of low cholesterol to your heart, in most cases, outweighs any skin cancer risk. And in any case, it's been shown that you are significantly more likely to get skin cancer if you only sun yourself rarely and get yourself burned.

Bleep fashion. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!

Hello Sea Change

What's "bad" cholesterol? Where does it come from? I thought Vitamin D came from sunshine.

It's enough for me that my soul is soothed by the sun's rays on my body. Occasionally I get burned - usually when I go into the garden for a "quick look" and end up getting sidetracked with weeding, harvesting and generally messing around.


F/b

You can't make Vitamin D with sunshine alone, but unless your are deadly undernourished, the raw materials for the making it are already in your body. One of the main ingredients is a certain kind of cholesterol. Calcium is also necessary, both for D formation, and in its uses throughout the body.

Your liver makes cholesterols. It isn't well known what causes the liver to make the different kinds of cholesterols. Some of them, called LDLs or low density lipoprotiens, have been shown to be statistically related to heart attacks due to artery blockage. If you have a high quantity of cholesterols, total, your heart attack rate goes up. If you have a higher percentage of LDL cholesterol compared to other kinds, your heart attack rate goes WAY up.

It's the LDL cholesterol that is used up when your body makes Vitamin D from sunshine.



It's the quick burns that seriously increase your chances for skin cancer. You really should avoid those. The chances for dying of a heart attack are usually much greater than that of skin cancer for most people, so if you have any family history of heart attack at all, quick burns are a small price to pay.

Long exposure has been shown to be not so bad, so long as you don't burn. Nothing wrong with being sensuous, if you want to think about what you are doing, too.



Oh, yeah, thanks for your compliment on my nickname. I was wondering if Frenchbean=te^te, or Frenchbean=haricot vert, but your Personal Space makes that clear.

I have learnt something today. Thank you Sea Change!

I am content to carry on with my gradual browning . Mind you, fat chance of that now that the Autumn Equinox is upon us and the sun is hiding behind the Scottish clouds.

Presumably you wouldn't recommend even a slow browning on a sunbed? I've read all sorts of scare stories about them. I wouldn't use one anyway: I'm not body-concious enough to want a tan when I can't get one naturally. But once I did indulge, and ended up itching all over for 2 days afterwards. Once was enough.


F/b

I don't know anything about tanning beds. I am much to squeamish to lay naked where someone else who I don't know has been nakedly sweating. Here in Los Angeles, where everyone is beautiful, nevertheless noone compliments you on your tan if you were born with it. I deliberately choose not to sunbathe to 'be tan', I just like being naked and it'll still be warm enough to do it in comfortably here for another month and a half.

I do know some of them don't have the full spectrum of sunshine, and so they may not activate vitamin D. Just which frequencies you *do* meed is something I don't know.

Unfortunately, it's now too cold to go naked outdoors here. I woke up to 1C outdoors this morning - brrr. (Cosy indoors of course.) But the sun is shining and it's a glorious autumnal day: the trees are just beginning to change colour into their spectacular end of season plumage.

There's a fashion culture of being seen to be tanned in UK. There are horror stories of teenagers/20-somethings going off to the Mediterranean for their week's summer holiday and burning themselves really badly, in the hope that when they get home they'll be tanned and be the envy of their friends. But they do so much damage to their skin in the meantime.

In Queensland, where I lived for a while, there's a big public campaign ongoing all the time, to encourage people (kids especially) to cover up and to keep the sunblock topped up. Everybody there is very sun-concious. Is it the same in LA? I've visited a couple of times and have certainly not seen people sun-baking, but then I've not been to the ocean there.

Perhaps it's because the hot sun is a bit of a novelty in UK, that people go mad for it when it's out.


F/b

It's quite socially desireable to be tan here as long as it's apparent that its not your natural color, but uncool to be seen getting that way. Tanning booths are quite popular. Putting on sunscreen is just making it obvious and conspicuous just what you are doing, so mostly one sees moms putting it on kids unless you're on a nude beach, where there's no self-consciousness about it. But, more of the fancier makeup and moisturizer companies have been offering products with sunscreen in them, so you can pretend to be doing something else while putting on your face for the day.

The wrinkles you get from dedicated tanning are even more verboten, so there's starting to be trends towards various spray on/paint on dyes that work on live skin (instead of, say, leather). This way one can seem tan, without actually tanning.

Sunglasses of course look cool, but one really needs them here.

Oh my! Fashions just pass me by. Imagine wanting to have a tan, but not being able to get one because it's not cool to be seen wanting one?! The world is a mad, mad place. But thank goodness for nude beaches!

As for spray-on dyes: I wonder what chemicals go into that lot? And are they any safer in the long run than going out and getting burnt?

Sunglasses are definitely cool We wore them all the time in Queensland, even on lightly cloudy days. The power of the sun is way stronger than in UK.


F/b