Like a smoker with a 40-a-day habit, I get a little uncomfortable around certain health warnings. Last week, a chain of chemists withdrew all sunscreens under factor 15 because it says they don't offer enough protection.
As a further reminder of the dangers of sunbathing this move by Lloyds pharmacy has bothered me - particularly as I'm a chronic hypochondriac and about to fly off for a holiday whose only objective and activity is a week's sunbathing round a pool.
While anyone involved in travel has a duty to stress the risks of skin cancer, for holiday firms it's the equivalent of having 'Smoking Kills' printed all over your cigarettes. There's never been a brochure to my knowledge with a picture of a cloudy sky on the cover, however hard it must have been for the British tourist boards to rustle up a convincing picture.
Sunshine is the opium of the holidaying masses: the only thing that induces us all to get on a charter flight and turn up at a warren-like resort where all normal behaviour is put on hold. If the sun shines, it confers status and meaning on our poolside lives. We are not idle: we are getting a tan.
Without sunshine, we are at best underdressed and at worst ques tioning our whole holiday. Next week, as I lie on a lounger in Kos, I can either pass the days slowly oiling, turning and getting evenly bronzed, or - should the sun fail to shine - sit indoors prodding despairingly at yet another Greek salad.
The message may be slowly filtering through to Britain that sunbathing is dangerous, although we are way behind Australians, who have long been aware of the risks. But it's one thing to persuade the Aussies, for whom sunny days are two a penny, and another to convince us in this rainsoaked nation that we shouldn't venture into the light.
As a travel journalist I wear my year-round tan much like a war correspondent's flak jacket, as a badge of honour from assignments abroad. Still, the recklessness of fellow Brits in action makes me gasp. In Crete recently, I saw two middle-aged skinheads arrive on the beach already lobster red and lie in the full glare of the midday sun, applying just a dribble of factor two cream to their copious beer bellies. Nothing could stop melanomas here, you felt, bar perhaps a speedy death from cirrhosis or heart disease.
A concerted campaign on skin cancer risks has the potential to change the whole face of holidaymaking. If sunshine - the one redeeming feature of many Mediterranean resorts - becomes a bad thing, where will it all end?
A future looms where colleagues remark enviously on your insipid pallor when you return from holiday, where potholing beats surfing, and the savvy tourist dives for cover under the roof of a Center Parc. At least this could signal boom times for one particular nation's tourist industry: Britain's much-maligned rainy days may just turn out to be the biggest asset of all.
· Gwyn Topham is editor of Guardian Unlimited travel, featuring the best travel writing from The Observer and Guardian, as well as original online news and features.
