This seems a good place to tell you that I live in New Zealand and as I write this morning -June 06 – it’s cloudy after some light drizzle, about 18 Celsius as we move into our winter. But, only one month ago our sun was fierce and you may not be aware that we have the highest incidence of melanoma and keratoses from UV in the world. Many visitors and tourists from the northern hemisphere grossly underestimate the damage our sunshine can do. When I was working in a hospital ( 20 years ) we would have several admissions each summer of, mainly British because of their links here, visitors with severe sunburn. They would arrive, go to the beach and not quite realise that, within an hour they could be very severely burnt. Remember also that we have a huge hole in the ozone layer just South of us – over Antarctica.

Skin Cancer is real and life threatening, and the sun has a lot to do with it. So remember, if you are going to visit this lovely country in our summer, listen to radio for UV warnings, slip, slap and slop like a Kiwi ( I should say here that one of the things I admire Shane Warne for is that he liberally uses zinc ointment for sun protection - and I won’t go into his other “attributes”! ) and very gradually increase your daily exposure.

Neil