How to become a naturist

I was asked this week how and when I decided to become a naturist. Well, I wrote in my first post for this blog about how a lady I worked with in my first job was happy to let colleagues know that she and her husband enjoyed naturist holidays. I suppose that was the first time it dawned on me that naturists weren't all sex-crazed weirdos, but ordinary people like this lady who, incidentally, lived in one of the leafiest parts of the posh middle-class Birmingham suburb of Sutton Coldfield.

But there were a lot of people working in that newspaper office (this was a very long time ago, in the mid-1980s before the internet decimated the newspaper industry) and as far as I know, I am the only one who ever showed any interest in social nudity. So what made me different?

If I am able to thank anyone for planting the seed of naturism in my brain, it would be my late mother. I was brought up in a house with a large back garden, with fencing on three sides and a field occupied only by horses on the other.

In the summer, my mother would regularly sunbathe topless in front of me, with no embarrassment from either of us, while she would let me paddle nude in my paddling pool and then run around naked in the garden to dry off. No-one other than the horses could see and we had a gate at the side of the house which we could lock to keep out unexpected visitors. Anyone calling at the house would have to ring the front-door bell, giving my mum enough time to slip on a bikini top and me the chance to pull on a pair of shorts.

Neither did we believe in locked doors in our house; My mum and dad were happy for me to see them dressing and undressing in their bedroom and there was no question of the bathroom door being locked at any stage. Indeed, I can well remember being given 'The Talk' by my mum as she sat nude on the side of the bath while I soaked in it.

So the naked body became familiar. I wasn't scared or frightened or embarrassed by nudity - it just became a regular part of life. I didn't need to put on pyjamas and/or a dressing gown at night - if I wanted to, I could walk around the house nude.

When I left home and went to University, this attitude went with me. I stayed in Halls of Residence throughout my three years (the student accommodation system was very different then) and I had my own room. I could and did lock the door and strip off. I kept a dressing gown next to the bed in case anyone knocked the door. My room looked out on to a garden with trees, which got a fair amount of sun; I quickly learned that if I lay on the floor at a certain angle, I could sunbathe nude while the sunlight flooded the room in the afternoons.

All this meant that by the time I met the naturist lady at work, nudity didn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, we often talked about the subject in our lunch breaks.

So my childhood was a perfect example of how to bring up a boy without fear or embarrassment. That's exactly how it should be today, but it's not. Why has our society become so frightened of nudity?