I’m back! Miss me? ‘Course you did.

Saying that, I can guarantee 98.3% of you didn’t notice I went anywhere; way to make a girl feel loved. In case you aren’t completely clued up about my life and tea preferences, I went to Sicily for two weeks and I’m a milk + one sugar kinda gal.

Now I’m satisfied that you are suitably confused, a mind-set that must be maintained when reading my blog, I’ll get back to making you jealous over my barely-there-tan and new Italian linguistic prowess.

Before I went on holiday, I studied the art of tanning. That may sound odd and slightly obsessive but really it was just me flicking through various articles such as ‘Putting Hours Into Getting An Effortless Tan’ and making mental notes. I realise I still sound odd and slightly obsessive but for a white, british female, tanning is hard. Like next-to-impossible-hard. I know this isn’t true for every girl in this skin-type category but I like to not feel alone in this dilemma.

These articles basically suggest that lying on an uncomfortable plastic sunbed for hours on end is only 25% of the whole debacle. There’s also shaving, exfoliating, moisturising, wearing the right colours and avoiding sunburn. Like I said, it’s hard.

The Mothership is a member of that superhuman cult who can literally sprint through a ray of sunshine and instantly have an all-over, no streaks, Victoria Beckham-esque, bronze glow. I religiously sunbathed for about six days in a row in Sicily and all I ended up with was faintly browner knees and a higher risk of skin cancer.

I’m not joking. How is it that TM can look like she bathed in fake-tan after an hour of sun exposure and I get tanned knees after six days? I know there’s some scientific explanation, something to do with melanin in your skin cells, but it’s just not fair.

                                           (sorry about this annoying link, just ignore it)

So now onto my slight grasp of the Italian language. By ‘grasp’, I mean I can say Ciao, Grazie and Spaghetti. Impressive, I know. At least I wasn’t like TM, who resorted to speaking in English with an embarrassing Italian accent. Thankfully, most Italians speak at least basic English so, like typical English tourists, we got by without having to speak much Italian.

I hope that one day I will go on a holiday and actually have a firmer resolve to speak the locals’ language but will that ever happen? Probably not. Even if I haven’t inherited the Perfect Tan Gene, I  definitely have the same reluctance to attempt to speak a foreign language with a person of that nationality. I worry I will just offend them with my painful accent and lack of tongue-rolling skills.

Ah well, perhaps one day I will find myself speaking fluent Italian with the locals, marveling over my perfect tan, and maybe even drinking tea without the sugar.

A girl can dream.