There’s a worrying television commercial on air here called The Dark Side of Tanning. Its aim is to prevent skin cancer.

Like a tick in search of nourishment, the cancer cell – black and tar-like in the TVC  - burrows beneath the skin to ride the rapids of the bloodstream, ending up in some far-flung corner of the body where it silently multiplies.

It’s enough to frighten the bejaysus out of anyone who’s ever ventured outdoors, let alone those of us with Celtic blood.

When I was a freckle-faced kid, my mother would chase me around beaches with a hat and sunblock. Sometimes she’d have to execute a flying tackle just to get them on me.

Once I hit my teen years, though, and I escaped my mother’s jurisdiction, I was determined to get a tan, just like my dark-haired friends and most of my family.

After a few nasty doses of sunburn, I began to realise that a tan and my skin were mutually exclusive. The effort simply wasn’t worth the pain.

I’ve sometimes wondered why, in a country as hot as this, personal sun umbrellas aren’t carried by those of us who are incompatible with sunshine.

Once known as parasols (para – against; sol – the sun), umbrellas are widely used in other hot countries. In places where it buckets down just about every afternoon, they also protect against a deluge.

The sunshade I have in mind is one that’s brightly coloured, specifically for Summer, preferably with a hand-held fan in matching or complementary colours. (If you’ve been following this blog for a while, dear reader, you’ll know my thoughts on that life-/energy-saving accessory. If not, click here.)

No longer would it be necessary to jam on a hat just when your hair’s finally settled down after a wash. At last we’d see an end to the sad affliction of hat-head.

Yes, I can just see it now: a pretty parasol shading my porcelain (currently freckly) skin as I waft a cooling fan about my person.

If you were to say that the only thing missing is a crinoline, you’d have a point. Parasols… fans… not very twenty-first century really, is it? But in the face of climbing greenhouse gas emissions, perhaps we need to resuscitate some old coping strategies… perhaps without the hoop skirt.

In last week’s repeat episode of The I.T. Crowd, Roy wore a t-shirt with the message ‘The sun is trying to kill me’. I know how he feels.