Can there be anything more glorious than a properly hot and sunny day in Scotland?

I’m sitting outside in my Mum’s beautiful garden, surrounded by cute, furry bumblebees and the scent of lavender, cooking myself gently (through an umbrella and a coating of factor 30) in the most fabulous sunshine I’ve seen for about three years!

There’s something about living through 9 months of freezing cold, dismal and wet weather that makes rejoicing in the first proper appearance of summer each year even sweeter. I’m sure that as a Scot (and originally a very Northern one at that) I’m more sensitive to the joy of the sun than your average warm-climate dweller.

Anyway, it’s my last day up in Inverness before returning to Edinburgh and the microflat later this afternoon (post barbeque, if all goes to plan and the sky stays clear). I can’t say I’m looking forward to it much; I know there are only another 4 weeks until Gus and I get the keys to our lovely new house, but we’ve been saying “It’s not long now” for the last 8 weeks, and my reserves of patience – never impressive at the best of times – are wearing thinner with each repetition of “Build me up Buttercup” from upstairs!

We’ve just spent a week travelling the Northern Highlands – a much more activity-packed holiday than I had anticipated, given my recent 1^st trimester shunnage of all physical exertion. On Tuesday we hiked to Sandwood Bay, a phenomenal white sandy beach on the Atlantic coast north of Kinlochbervie – along with Applecross on the Western coast, one of my favourite places in the world. It’s reasonably hard work getting there (4.5 miles of rough, undulating track – then you have to get home!) but extremely worth the effort.

After Sandwood, Gus and I realised we were sunburnt – not something we had really anticipated, given the random rain and hailstones we’d walked through on the way, but that’s Scottish weather for you. It doesn’t seem to matter how often we go up North and encounter sunshine, we never think to pack sunscreen – as if the sun in Scotland “doesn’t count” for some reason. Anyway I am now paying for being remiss, as the unaccustomed sun on my face, plus an odd pregnancy-related condition called “chloasma”, mean that I have developed random dark patches of skin on my face.

They’re not too noticeable yet, for which I am profoundly grateful, but I’ve learned my lesson now and am smothering myself in factor 30 every 5 minutes. It’s not just a case of being vain (although as I start to lose my figure I have noticed I’m spending more and more time on my eyebrows…), it’s just that the patches – really quite small and inoffensive in another location – have cunningly chosen to materialise on either side of the dent between my nose and my top lip. Should they get darker and grow, something I understand could easily happen, and is more likely to if I expose myself to the sun willynilly,  they could join up in the middle - in which case I’d be left sporting a fetching Hitler ‘tache!

I’m now wondering if it’s safe to use moustache bleach during pregnancy – I thought that maybe dyeing my upper lip fluff might lighten the whole area and deflect attention from the offending patches. However, then I worry that the whole unnaturally light hair/unnaturally dark skin combo might all be a bit Atomic Kitten for my usual natural image, and highlighting the area could turn out to be an ill-considered publicity stunt. Oh, decisions decisions…

So, despite its coy shyness the sun in Scotland definitely does “count” (even when it’s randomly splitting hailstone-dispensing clouds) and henceforth I am taking up arms ‘gainst a sea of troubles and sticking like glue to my bottle of sunscreen.

Not that I’m complaining, of course – a burgeoning dictator ‘tache is a fairly small price to pay for the joy of being able to sit outside with your morning coffee. I do love summer, it’s great!