One Young Fool in Dorset Read Online Free PDF Page B

as my family watched. I kicked
my legs - and I was swimming! I never saw the stranger again, but
he did me a big favour.
    Sometimes my brother and I would explore the dunes
for a while.
    “Don’t go too far!” called my mother. “And if you
see something suspicious, don’t dig it up.”
    We knew what she meant. Studland had been used as a
practice firing range at one time, and it wasn’t unusual to unearth
an unexploded shell.
    On one particular occasion, perhaps that year or
later, we went deep into the dunes. We were African explorers
hunting big game. Sometimes we had to drop onto all-fours to hide
from lions. Once, a giant python (well, a piece of discarded
tubing) nearly grabbed us, but we were too fast. We rolled down the
dune out of its reach. We crawled, commando-style, around a
particularly large dune, utterly silent, then froze.
    In front of us lay a group of adults sunbathing.
They were a mixed bunch of men and ladies, stretched out on towels.
Their eyes were closed and apart from a hand swishing away the odd
fly, they didn’t move.
    But there was something astounding about these
grown-ups that caused my brother and I to gape, then stare at each
other with round, disbelieving eyes.

4
Naked
    Jam Roly-Poly
    “ T hey’ve got no clothes on!” I mouthed to my
brother.
    “They’re bare!” he whispered, his eyes out on
stalks.
    We backed away, hands covering our mouths, eyes like
manhole covers. I don’t know why we were so shocked because both
our parents often wandered around in the nude at home, and there
were no locks on the bathroom door. They were totally uninhibited,
and if it was hot, they took off their clothes. To them it was
logical. We kids accepted that, but to see other people, in
public, without clothes on, was most unexpected.
    The quickest way back to our picnic party was along
the beach. We pelted over the dunes, back to the normality of the
beach, then froze.
    Everyone was naked.
    Family groups, children making sandcastles. Couples
stretched out sunbathing. People paddling at the water’s edge.
Grandparents under sun shades, reading or dozing. Teenagers
throwing balls or frisbees to each other.
    They were all naked.
    “We’re the only ones with clothes on!”
    Crimson with embarrassment and without looking left
or right, we made a dash for it. Along the beach we galloped, not
stopping until we reached our own beach party, who were decently
clothed.
    “Whatever is the matter with you two?” asked our
sister.
    “Back there...” I squeaked, clutching my chest and
gasping for breath.
    “ Ach, what?” asked my mother.
    “Back there…”
    “Yes?”
    “ Nobody has got any clothes on! ”
    “They’re all bare! ” said my brother, whose
eyebrows had disappeared into his hairline.
    “ Ach, ” said my mother, not in the least
concerned. “You wandered too far, that’s all. You went as far as
the naturist beach.”
    “Naturist?”
    “Yes, some people prefer not to wear clothes at all.
Did you not see the big blue warning signs?”

    I thought hard. Yes, I’d seen the signs, but I
thought naturists were people who liked nature and wildlife, like
me. And I certainly didn’t know that for decades, in fact since the
1920s, one kilometre of the beach had been given over to nudists.
Studland is probably the best known naturist beach in Great Britain
and is run by the National Trust.
    Studland was a popular beach for naturists,
naturalists and families alike, and some summer days the cars
queued for miles as families headed to the beach. Often they sat
stationary, nose to tail, engines idling, baking in the sun as they
waited to creep forward. This set my mother’s brain ticking. She
had an entrepreneurial spirit that constantly devised ways to make
extra money.
    “ Ach, I’ll go to Cash and Carry and buy
Coca-Colas,” she said. “Then I will park Ivy in a lay-by and I’ll
walk up and down the line of cars, selling Coca-Colas. I will make
a fortune! They will be so thirsty and