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 old Noel Coward song about “Mad Dogs and English Men, go out in the noon day sun”? We have our own version of it: “Mad Dogs and Scots are oot in the noon day sun – with their taps aff.” Yes, we go further.

There’s a reason 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, unpredictable visits, during which we are embarrassingly over-enthusiastic and grateful, in a way that comes across as slightly desperate and slobbery.

Year after year our equivalent of Beatlemania happens again and again. Hence, we’re never going to look cool. The Italians, the Spaniards, the Greeks, the Croatians, the French ... they can all do sun with a bit of sartorial sang-froid, 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 the peely-wally Scot strips off her or his layers it’s as if they are more naked than naked, as if they have only just slipped out of the womb. I remember, as a child on the beach, feeling almost embarrassingly bare in my swimsuit, as if some crucial layer of 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, ranging through from purple-white to the darkest of browns, 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 sweaty tomatoes on our way to a heat-induced and very messy, emotional meltdown, possibly involving spilt juice everywhere.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Milan, Madrid, Dubrovnik and other fashionable Mediterranean cities there are men who can work a sharp suit without breaking a sweat, 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 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 feminist not to have a moment of hesitation on gazing at their fields of shin, previously neglected and hidden under leggings, 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 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. And, in any case, hurrah, it’s 2017, the year when it’s officially been announced that body hair is back – when even celebs like Miley Cyrus and Madonna are backing hirsute pits.

Besides everyone else is doing it. We’re all involved in this collective madness. And, in any case, there’s an upside to the trauma we go through during taps aff. 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.