Thursday afternoon and, like much of the country, I’m talking politics. Unlike most, however, I’m not swapping a bit of chit-chat with colleagues, but ten strangers — and we’re not in an office but on a horse-drawn cart being pulled through a field of wheat.
Oh, and we’re all stark naked. Sitting along benches on either side of the open-topped cart, our bodies bob and bounce gently to the sway of the suspension, as I mentally plead with my eyes not to stray too far south.
I’m at Nudefest in Somerset, the UK’s largest naturist festival, where 600 aficionados have convened to spend this week starkers.
Everywhere I look, I am bombarded by bodily parts that never normally see the light of day, whether they belong to the man doing the Downward Dog in front of me at yoga, the woman lying spread-eagled on a circus stage as knives are juggled over her head, or the fellow diner whose privates I inadvertently get a close-up of when I reach for my wallet on the floor to pay for my £10 falafel at lunch (naturists, of course, don’t do pockets.)
I see large bodies and small, sunburnt breasts belonging to women aged from their 30s to 70s, and every combination of body hair invented. Understandably, accessories are thin on the ground, save for sandals and sun hats, but almost everyone is wearing a smile.
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