I’ve booked eight minutes, the shortest possible time offered by the sunbeds store, in the middle of a working day. Near naked, with my hands curled around the bars, my first impression as I watch the minutes climb up is how heady and immediate the feeling is. Within three minutes, my skin begins to sweat, prickling, the way it does in direct sun , sprawled out on holiday .
At six minutes, I lean my face closer to the air vents, drinking in deep breaths of tepid air. When eight minutes tolls on the machine and it flips unceremoniously into darkness, I have to squint through the store-issued eye stickers to fumble my way out of the machine. I wrestle into my clothes, walk past the shop assistants talking about tuition fees, before I burst out of the store into the middle of central London , the street teeming with tourists and businessmen.
It’s a shock to look up and see the blanket of grey clouds swimming above. I’ve still got sweat cooling on my lip and hairline. It’s 16 degrees but I’m hot in my jacket.
I walk back to the office , cap jammed down over my face, hiding my flushed cheeks, feeling like I’ve done something incredibly stupid but incredibly delightful at the same time. In the UK , there have been reports of a rise in the number of young people using sunbeds. A 2024 survey by skin cancer charity Melanoma Focus asked 2,003 “nationally representative adults” between the ages of 16 and 65, and found that nearly 28 per cent of all survey respondents wer.