August in Beirut, and what to stop doing

An August here is not the same season as an August in a country with a dry summer. The humidity sits above eighty per cent, the air conditioning runs from morning to night and pulls the water straight back out of the room, and the sun between ten and four is genuinely strong rather than pleasantly warm.

Four things worth changing

Use less of the rich things, not none of them. A night cream in August is not wrong; half the usual amount of it is right. Skin that is stripped in the summer overproduces oil and people read that as needing a stronger wash, and the cycle goes on until October.

Wash twice in the evening if you have been in the sea. Salt sits on the face and draws water out of it all night. Once to take the day off, once to take the salt off.

Reapply the sunscreen at lunch. This is the only piece of advice here that actually matters. Fifty in the morning is not fifty at three in the afternoon, whatever anybody puts on the tube.

Keep a mist in the fridge. Not because cold does anything permanent to skin. Because the afternoon is more bearable, and a routine somebody enjoys is a routine somebody keeps.

Three not to bother with

Switching everything to a summer version of itself. Buying a stronger cleanser. Believing that anything applied to the outside of your face will undo a day spent on the water without a hat.

None of this is clinical advice, and none of it is proven. It is what a person who has made these things for five summers has noticed, which is a smaller claim and an honest one.