We Meet...
25th June 1977 was one of those lovely sunny, hot Saturdays in England, blue skies fluffy white clouds and my (then) husband and I were on our way to meet Mr & Mrs Walker for an interview to join BDOC Naturist Club. We only had his Mum's old beetle that was on it's last legs, but, we managed to follow the very precise details we had been sent in a letter and taken the right turn 3.8 miles off the A31, and thought we had found the place. But, the driveway of a very posh house was full of cars...Rolls Royce, Jensen, Volvo, Stag, Range Rover.... I seem to remember, so, we thought that maybe we were either in the wrong place and some sort of meeting of some big wigs was going on or we had come to the right place at the wrong time. I saw an old boy in his light blue shirt, shorts and Jesus sandals, white grey hair and going bald, sweating like a pig and mopping his brow and red nose, furiously sawing up logs. I thought he was the gardener or handy man, so I went over and we got chatting, nice old bloke I thought, very well spoken, the Queen's English, unlike me, a bit of a Hampshire hog.
By now time had passed and I asked him if we were in the right place, and if he knew where Mr & Mrs Walker lived. Was it here? ''Oh yes" he said "that's me, come on in". Little did I know that this 60 year old man (I was 26 at the time) was not only going to change my life, but, weave his way through it, sometimes dominating it completely... and eventually I would marry him!
So why did we even want to join a Naturist Club?
For me it started when we went out one evening with my sister Ellie and her then husband, and found out that the reason we never saw her at weekends, was that they went to a Club called South Hants, and that they played a game called Miniten. (She became very good at Miniten and over the years has won loads of Cups and Tournaments and the equivalent of the Naturist "Wimbledon" for so many years, it began to get boring! Bit like the Venus sisters always winning.) My husband and I enjoyed sports, the usual team games of volleyball, badminton, netball, football, cricket, rugby, where we joined clubs and enjoyed the camaraderie and joint interests of the many friends we had made. I also liked to sunbathe and relax at the weekends and be brown, and not have white stripes from my bikini top; so, I always let the straps down and tied my hair up so that my neck and shoulders could get nicely brown. I hated the sea and sand and much preferred sitting on a sun bed in the garden with my Sony Walkman and the latest Cosmopolitan, with a cup of tea and a loo nearby...Heaven. So the prospect of us joining a new club with all the boxes ticked sounded great. There was one big problem. We had to get our kit off to join. We debated it for ages, Ellie told us that the BDOC club was probably better than hers and the clubhouse and facilities were the best in the UK, anyway, we thought what the heck, we can at least see it. So we took the plunge and wrote off for an interview.
After meeting Mr & Mrs Walker (as they liked to be addressed then), and, I suppose, us "passing" our interview they told us to follow them to the Club, they in the blue Rolls, us in the old jalopy beetle. Well, to say we were impressed is putting it mildly, it was just lovely, grassy south facing banks of lawns, Olympic size swimming pool,
For me it started when we went out one evening with my sister Ellie and her then husband, and found out that the reason we never saw her at weekends, was that they went to a Club called South Hants, and that they played a game called Miniten. (She became very good at Miniten and over the years has won loads of Cups and Tournaments and the equivalent of the Naturist "Wimbledon" for so many years, it began to get boring! Bit like the Venus sisters always winning.) My husband and I enjoyed sports, the usual team games of volleyball, badminton, netball, football, cricket, rugby, where we joined clubs and enjoyed the camaraderie and joint interests of the many friends we had made. I also liked to sunbathe and relax at the weekends and be brown, and not have white stripes from my bikini top; so, I always let the straps down and tied my hair up so that my neck and shoulders could get nicely brown. I hated the sea and sand and much preferred sitting on a sun bed in the garden with my Sony Walkman and the latest Cosmopolitan, with a cup of tea and a loo nearby...Heaven. So the prospect of us joining a new club with all the boxes ticked sounded great. There was one big problem. We had to get our kit off to join. We debated it for ages, Ellie told us that the BDOC club was probably better than hers and the clubhouse and facilities were the best in the UK, anyway, we thought what the heck, we can at least see it. So we took the plunge and wrote off for an interview.
After meeting Mr & Mrs Walker (as they liked to be addressed then), and, I suppose, us "passing" our interview they told us to follow them to the Club, they in the blue Rolls, us in the old jalopy beetle. Well, to say we were impressed is putting it mildly, it was just lovely, grassy south facing banks of lawns, Olympic size swimming pool,
quiet, peaceful, a great wooden clubhouse with a bar and restaurant, with all those funny blobbing lamps on the walls and all over the place (which apparently Mr Walker had invented and the sales of them funded his hobby...BDOC), afternoon Sunday tea on the lawn, lots of young members our age, and some with families, a Sauna even! 4 of the Miniten courts, a volleyball court. The grassy lawns, silver birch trees and purple rhododendron bushes were everywhere, giving place feel little piece of a secret Garden of Eden on earth.
Wow, and we could afford the very reasonable club membership fees too. The only other price in the equation was to be nude with complete strangers. I had never been nude in front of my family, and didn't much care for prancing about nude in the house anyway. I had been brought up very strictly and the whole 'hippy love ya man thing' had sort of passed over me. I thought, well I suppose taking my bikini off was a small price to pay, and I could always just be on my own on one of the smallest lawns and put a kaftan on to go to the loo/clubhouse. They would never know, yes I could pull it off. So we joined.