Taps on or aff, we just don’t have what it takes to look cool in the sun
SUN’S oot, which means taps aff and the brief, annual festival of Scots losing their minds – ripping off layers like sheep moulting fleeces and showing the world that they do have skin, and, look mum, it does turn bright red, like one of those colour-changing ornaments, in the sun.
No-one else does self-exposure, burning, and letting it all hang out like we do – except possibly the Irish, the English and maybe a few Scandinavians. But we beat them all.
You know that Noel Coward song about “Mad dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun”? We have our own version of it: “Mad dogs and Scots are oot in the midday sun – with their taps aff.” Yes, we go further.
There is, of course, a reason why Scots don’t do sun well. It’s because that big, proper, full-heat sun is, to us, something of a celebrity – here only on occasional visits, during which we are embarrassingly over-enthusiastic and grateful, in a way that comes across as slightly desperate.
The Italians, the Spaniards, the Greeks, the Croatians, the French – they can all do sun with a bit of sartorial sangfroid, stepping out into its glare as if they barely cared whether it arrived or not, and had certainly not done anything to prepare, since, in fact, with their golden limbs, they are always and ever ready.
But not us. We are never ready. When a peely-wally Scot strips off his or her layers it’s as if they have only just slipped out of the womb. I remember, as a child, feeling almost embarrassingly bare, as if some extra skin was missing.
But it’s more than that. Many of us simply can’t deal with the heat.
There are, of course, many types of people living in Scotland, with a vast range of baseline skin tones but I’m
one of those classic northern types, equipped for the ice and snow. It’s not just that taps-aff weather means there is no place to hide those pale and unfashionable body parts, it’s that a bit of heat makes many of us look, whatever we’re wearing, like a sweaty tomato, on our way to a heat-induced emotional meltdown.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Milan, Paris, Madrid Dubrovnik and other fashionable Med cities there are men who can work a sharp suit without breaking a sweat, and women who, whether they’re sporting a bikini or a Versace dress, look as cool as a granita.
There are things that I like about our kamikaze approach to sun.
One is the blatant, temporary obliviousness to all the rules of body fascism. A great many of us seem really happy to let it all hang out, though admittedly most of them are men.
For women, the whole dilemma isn’t about taps aff or taps oan, it’s legs oot or legs in, and this is a universal problem whatever your baseline skin tone. After all, few women are free from the perennial issue of body hair.
It takes the boldest of feminists not to have a moment of hesitation on gazing at their shins, previously neglected and hidden under leggings, thick tights and trousers, now being bared to the world.
Because of all this, taps aff is mostly only lived out in its full abandon and sartorial senselessness by guys.
That’s not to say we women don’t have our own version of it, which runs something like this: You look out. The sun is high in the sky, the pavements are baking.
There is skin already out there on the street, cautiously, or even brazenly, edging its way out from under vest tops and long shorts. Some of it is almost as pale as your own.
You could, of course, scurry into your bathroom to shave your legs, slap on some three year-old fake tan and head out razor-nicked and smudged, but there isn’t really time for that.
The sun will be long gone by the time that’s done.
In any case, hurrah, it’s 2017, the year when it’s officially been announced that body hair is back on the agenda – when even celebs such as Miley Cyrus and Madonna are backing hairy pits.
Besides, everyone else is doing it. We’re all involved in this collective madness. And there’s also an upside to the trauma we go through during taps
At least it means that even as the summer fades there’s something to look forward to.
The return of the grey, the cooling of the days, and the look that we do best of all – taps oan. Probably today.