Several years ago, I went for a swim after I’d been for a job interview. I’d just finished my lengths, had my shower, and as I wrestled my knickers back on, a voice from behind me said ‘It’s Ettie, isn’t it?’ Quite how she recognised my bare bottom I don’t know, but the woman who’d interviewed me earlier in the day was certainly keen to continue our conversation, up close, personal and starkers. And for those of you who’ve never tried, I can assure you that trying to juggle one’s bosom into a bra in a flustered hurry when one is still slightly damp to protect what shreds of self-respect remain is inelegant at best.
I’m generally far too ill-adjusted to go skinny dipping
The whole exchange left me wondering about naked etiquette. Was she Germanically uninhibited or was I a total prude in my intensely awkward nakedness? I’m not one of those types who bolts herself into a changing room to don my togs lest someone catch sight of a flailing breast, but I certainly don’t spin out the stripping. There are plenty who do, and indeed there seems to be an inverse correlation between attractiveness and modesty. Total babes in their twenties will scurry into a cubicle. But there’s a morbidly obese old bird who insists on standing in front of the mirror, completely starkers, drying what chez nous we refer to as one’s Dardanelles with a brace of hairdryers. Fortunately, she only swims occasionally.
Maybe a certain naked nonchalance comes with age. Neither my mother nor my parents-in-law have any qualms about being caught with nothing on. The first time I went on holiday with my husband’s family, I saw both of his parents completely starkers within half an hour of arriving at our apartment. And I’ll wager there isn’t a builder or decorator, handyman in south-west London who hasn’t seen my mother making a naked dart between her bedroom and bathroom.
Older men seem to be the worst offenders. The sort who’ll clip their toenails and blow dry their bald pate before deigning to don their greying Y-fronts, and who seem to particularly relish delaying doing so when there are innocent, unsullied children around. My husband tells some particularly harrowing changing room tales, including that of an old pseud who heaves his almighty naked carcass up onto the bench to dry his behind under the hand dryer.
But despite my aversion to gratuitous nudity, there have been other mortifying occasions on which I’ve been caught out in a state of déshabillée. I’m generally far too ill-adjusted to go skinny dipping (inaccurate nomenclature in my case anyway) unless I’m pretty sure I’m entirely alone. Or unless I’ve been over-served. I mercifully remember only snatches of a New Year’s Eve in Pembrokeshire when a naked swim in the sea seemed like a good way to usher in the year ahead. But I hadn’t banked on a post-swim naked chase of my hosts’ labrador who had taken my underwear and was reluctant to release it.
And there have been other, more blameless occasions. My parents-in-law have a house on the edge of a tiny hamlet in Dorset. It’s almost entirely hidden, and a river skirts around three sides of the garden; beyond are woods, water meadows, and a rather lovely, Grade-II listed church that gets all the use the Church of England seems able to muster these days. Therefore, when I found I’d stupidly left my togs in London one weekend last January, I felt I could risk an undisturbed naked dip in the dying light of a wintry afternoon. I’m pretty good in cold water, but the river was six degrees, and I didn’t think I’d last long.
You can imagine my horror therefore when, after I’d been bobbing away for about ten minutes, I suddenly caught sight of the verger emerging through the gloaming to discuss riverbank maintenance with my husband. I was trapped: there was no way I could drift back to point where I’d entered without some full frontal flashage, which could have sent the old codger to a slightly premature grave. What ensued bolstered my view that one can never underestimate an Anglican verger’s preciousness; he had much to say about the importance of fastidious grooming of the undergrowth. Half an hour’s pedantry later, my husband insisted that he had to go and help me out of the river. When it dawned on the verger that I was in a state of comprehensive nudity, he scuttled off. I haven’t seen him since.
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