Patrick Thompson

From my earliest recollections I have known life in a 'naturist' home. My parents were not naturists as such because no-one ever knew that word or what it might mean. My whole family were quite at ease being naked and within our home life there was no real difference between clothed & naked routines, meals or chats. If any one of us had no clothes on it was of no consequence at all. Of course there were certain precautions we were made aware of from a very early age, mainly because all those other folk 'out there' often behaved quite stupidly at the sight of bare skin. My mother would say to myself & my sisters, "Be sure to know who is coming in before you wonder about without pants on and if me or your dad haven't got clothes on, ask first before you ask other folk to come in." We knew that this was because of 'their' odd behaviour not ours. Some neighbours were ok, as were most of their kids. Kath Leminster often popped in and out of our house at various times, her two girls & her son sometimes came in but usually we had to get dressed & go outside to see them. Kath made no remarks at all, (that I can remember) about seeing my mother or my dad naked or in very little clothing. Her husband Jack was rarely about, he travelled the country with his truck carrying all sorts of stuff between shops & suppliers. I can remember him coming in once when my mother sat nude on the settee and dad was stacking up the firewood box, (also naked apart from his open shirt & his knee pad protecting his 'dodgy' bone!). Jack brought in a big packet of tea that he had 'aquired' for us. He said, "Here Rose there's half a pound of best tea leaves to make a cuppa to beat the best!" He glanced only briefly at mothers ample bared body, even more briefly at myself & my sisters sat on the large wooden kitchen table. Dad took hold of Jack's arm and led him to the door saying " Steady on Jack, go home before your eyes get sore!"
Over so many years it became second nature to know who could come into our home and who couldn't, but there was never anytime when we were made to put clothes on if we didn't want to. In my later school years we knew of another small family who lived as freely as we did, but they lived a good distance away from us. The conversations with them were so much better than the ones we had with other kids or the parents, we could speak freely without concern about who could be listening. Even from that young age we often got puzzled about why every 'authority' or 'busy-body' was so much against seeing a bare human body. Maybe, we thought, they had very ugly distorted bodies that they were ashamed of.
We realized in later years that no-one really did have distorted weird bodies but they were ashamed, mostly about their own lack of self control & the tight restrictive minds they had genetically acquired from Victorian uptight parents & grandparents.