Oh. My. God. I popped into Tesco this afternoon and found myself a-wandering the clothes aisles for no particular reason.

But it must have been fate because look what I found. Isn’t this dress just the most me dress you’ve ever seen? It’s so gorgeous I actually called Headapollo’s mobile phone from the changing rooms to get him to come see it, dragging him away from the reduced-to-clear fridge because I was too excited to wait till I got it home to show him.

It’s kind of broderie anglaise and swirly and curvy, and lined too, and – get this – it was £16!£16! At that price I’m thinking I might even go back and get the brown one too.

Wow, it’s pretty. I feel like someone from The Sound of Music in it. No, I feel like a sexy buxom milkmaid in it, and I want to wear it to run through fields and sing, and twirl around, and do handstands and then indulge in hanky panky with a farm boy in the long grass, or actually with my boyfriend dressed as a farm boy (I wonder if he’d do that for me?). Wow, it’s so pretty. For the first time in my life I find myself genuinely looking forward to summery clothing. Thank God for last summer’s cotton wrap-dress discovery. And for red. Always thank God for red.

I have survived without melting, without burning, and without feeling like a white lardy heffalump more than a couple of times. I can’t say I have learned to enjoy summer, but I’ve coped. The keys are dresses, wedge sandals, and regular application of Johnson’s Holiday Skin. And staying the hell inside.

I just broke my shoe! One of the leather straps has come unglued. I shouldn’t have strutted so damn hard.

I love these sandals. I’d forgotten all about them and rediscovered them last week. I am 12 feet tall. They’re surprisingly comfy, too. Thank Christ I live in an urban hell with flat surfaces.

So today I am debuting the dress from entry three as a dress sans jeans. I’m not sure how it’s going. I feel a bit exposed. It’s shorter than anything I’ve worn since I was 16, and I feel like the whole world is my gynaecologist, but so far the riding-up problem isn’t too bad. I’ve got my slip in my bag just in case. Note the milky-white skin though. That’s with a week of Johnson’s Holiday Skin on it. Sigh. And I don’t like having bare arms either. But I got a new haircut yesterday, and the aceness of that is buoying up my foxiness. I am as cool as a cucumber. Or maybe just a gherkin.

Me, oh, my, it’s pretty. I got it off ebay in a fit of insanity, cos buying clothes without trying them on is rarely a good idea. But it’s lush. I had to have it altered cos it was built for a normal-height person, not a dwarf, so it was too long and a bit too big for me up top. This cost more than the dress itself and made it less of a bargain, but I love it now. I sat around in it last night at paperfaerie’s feeling all ladylike and womanly. I’m going to wear it out tonight, maybe with jeans, and my lovely brown lady-shoes, and be too cool for school.

Having said that, summer seems to be gone again. But at least I’ve discovered that cotton wrap dresses are the way forward.

I grew up hating the wicked summers of the Chicago area. What’s worse, I was always made to feel guilty because I hated the summers and dreaded them every year. Now that I’m older I live in the DC area - and the summers are just as awful. I HATE the humidity! So, I got a job that allows me to have the summers off - teaching! Several years ago, I decided to try “summering” in the southern hemisphere, and spent my summer in the Brazilian winter. What a way to go! It was perfect! And I came back up only at the very end of summer when it was cooler. I managed to avoid summer weather completely! I’ve also done the same with a summer in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile… And THIS YEAR I plan to spend my summer in the WINTER of BUENOS AIRES!!!!!!! HOORAY FOR SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE WINTERS!!!!

..to let me know about this article on the tyranny of summer and how society encourages us, nay, expects us to react to it with joy and barbecues rather than sweat and apathy. I was reaching for the cheer button before remembering it was the Guardian’s website and doesn’t have one (why the hell not, eh?). Anyway, it’s been boiling the last few days, and I’ve coped OK. Admittedly I have been either in an air-conditioned office, or in a darkened room off sick and revising. When I rang in sick on the hottest day of the year my boss naturally assumed that the two events were connected and that I’d be, in his words, “convalescing in the sunshine”, but not so. Of course, telling him that falls under the banner of protesting too much, so I let it slide and returned to work as pale and interesting as ever. But in a dress! A cotton wraparound dress, with bare legs and everything, that’s surprisingly comfortable and flattering. So I now have one summer outfit that I can wear without feeling like a lumpen fraud. Yay me. It’s a start.

Most people just don’t get it, they like to lie around in the boiling hot sun burning to a crisp, and I can think of little worse. Summer and me don’t get on, for a multitude of reasons. Admittedly, they’re mostly based in vanity.

1) It’s too bloody hot. Even British summers are too hot for me. I don’t like to sweat, I don’t like to squint. I don’t like to feel weighted down by the booooiiiiling hot sun making me lethargic and sleepy. It makes me want to sit in a dark room with a fan on. And the weather is unpredictable – it wouldn’t be so bad if you knew that every day between May and September was a skirt-and-sandals jobby, but no. You look out of your bedroom window and see a sunny day, don your summer clothes and don’t take a coat to work, and by lunchtime it’s freezing and pissing it down and you can’t go out. Or it’s hoying it down in the morning, so you put on jeans and boots, and within hours all the men are walking around shirtless and it’s boiling hot, and your feet are submerged in a puddle of sweat, and you daren’t take your boots off for fear of causing a poison gas outbreak in the office.

2) The clothes are shit. Or rather, they look shit on me. I’m an autumn-winter girl clothes-wise. I require structured clothing that holds it all in and gives some shape. I don’t want to be forced expose my wobbly bits either to air or to lack of support just to stay comfortably cool. Bras are uncomfortable in the summer, but some of us just can’t do without them, and that restricts clothing even more. Floaty cotton dresses and skimpy vest tops make me look either like a) a house or b) a sausage. I can’t do shorts or I look like a toddler. I need heels cos I’m titchy but they’re a pain in the summer when your feet sweat and slide around in them, and blisters come easier than ever. And heels don’t work well on grass.

3) I am pale. I burn. And I remain pale, even with the addition of fake tan. Apart from my knees, which go orange. Without a tan, the sun highlights flaws and things on my face and body I don’t want highlighted. I have to shave my legs every single day unless I want a speckled microdot black-on-white effect. Sweating gives me spots, and then melts off the makeup I put on to hide the spots. I look rubbish in bright sunlight.

4) The sun makes me squint. It’s hard for me to find sunglasses cos I have a tiny head and odd eyebrows, and I usually resort to kids’ sunglasses. And I always break them within a month.

Summer is shit.

I need to come up with some kind of plan to cope with it. But not right now, although any suggestions are welcome. Just please, please don’t try to make me like summer. It’s not in my nature. Coping with it is the best I can do.