The Idler

Powerboating in Greece

To be honest it wasn�t a crap holiday, not to start with at least. I was thirteen when my mum, dad and I hired a powerboat and spent a fortnight gliding round the Islands off the coast of Greece. At first it was heaven. Deserted islands, cheap and delicious food, the gorgeous daughters of fellow tourists to flirt with, warm clear water and blissful sunshine. The first week was perfect, but then we met Greg and Claire from Hartlepool.

They got on with my parents like a house on fire and we spent the rest of the holiday shadowing each others boats from one island to another. Not so bad you might think, but Greg and Claire were not all they seemed. The next morning when we emerged we discovered that Greg and Claire were completely-shaven naturists.

Once their early inhibitions had been quelled they were naked all the time. At breakfast, when they went for a swim, when we moared on a deserted island and climbed a bracken-covered hill. There seemed no limit to their nakedness. But if you think that sounds excruciatingly embarrassing it soon got worse. Much, much, worse. To my eternal shame, within two days of meeting them Greg and Claire had persuaded my parents to become naturists too.

Embarrassing isn�t the word. Everywhere we went I was the only one wearing any clothes. I went from being an normal teenager on holiday with his normal parents to becoming a maudlin thirteen year old child with startlingly hairy and naked parents. Other boaters avoided us like the plague, especially other boaters with beautiful thirteen-year-old daughters. Holiday romance? Yeah right. But the worst thing was trying to make small talk with Greg and Claire. Talking to friends of your parents when you’re thirteen is hard enough at the best of times, but when they’re naked? And when they’ve made your parents naked? Jesus wept.

Years later while talking to a man I was paying by the hour to disentangle the emotional trauma of my early years, my opinion that my parent’s behaviour had verged on child abuse was confirmed.

Craig