It is in many ways a luxury to live so close to the sea. Yet Australians may be paying for that luxury, not just with the ridiculous cost of living, but with our faces. Our sunburnt country, hot gold hush of noon and pitiless blue skies have little mercy on our pale skin, which is ageing by as much as two decades faster than our counterparts in Europe and America. Our outdoor lifestyles have a downside.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? It's no secret that Irish people are some of the palest — if not the palest — people in the world. We moan about the weather all year round, but when the sun does show up we complain, turn some unholy shade of scarlet and curse at our ghostly skin. But why are we so fair? Believe it or not, but we might have just one person from history to blame for our sunburnability — and it's not Mother Nature well, she didn't help.

You should be at home in bed! Yes, we could. I know people mean well with this one, and it would be fine I was, like 6 years old or something.

The little girl outside the temple in Mandalay, Myanmar, last week was so beautiful I couldn't stop staring. What's more, she was looking at me with what appeared to be similar admiration, casting a smile my way that could light up a city grid. Eventually, the cherub shyly approached and handed me a posy of water lotus almost as exquisite as she. Only white beautiful.