It’s deeply middle class to be so uptight about nudity – get a grip and turn the other cheek
There are worse things in life to see than a middle-aged bottom aired in its own garden
Have you ever walked around your garden naked? I only ask since my favourite story of the week, quite possibly of all weeks ever, concerns the case of the senior RAF officer who’s been suspended from duty for strolling around his Oxfordshire garden in the buff.
The facts as they lie before us are these: Air Marshal Andrew Turner, 54, was pottering about his garden naked last August when a neighbour spotted him and immediately called her partner, who was working outside on a fence. I understand this part entirely because if you see something funny or mildly titillating in the next-door garden, you do quickly alert your other half to share the joke. Unfortunately, however, instead of giggling and remarking that it might make things awkward the next time they saw him in the village church, Mr Herbert, the neighbour, also 54, rang Thames Valley Police.
The reports of the case are sublime. “I only had him in my view for a second or so, long enough to realise it was Andrew and he was naked,” thundered Mr Herbert, clarifying that his neighbour was “fully naked, not even wearing shoes”. Got that? Tackle out, but no shoes. Heavens, they’re a wild bunch in Oxfordshire.
Having put the phone down and wearily started a new case file, the police handed Air Marshal Turner a “community resolution order”, which meant that he had to write a letter of apology to his neighbours. In this letter, which appears to have enraged Mr Herbert further, our plucky pilot claimed he was naked because it was hot, and he was only bending down to pick up a tennis ball for his dog. As excuses go, it’s marvellous. Eve should have given it a go in the Garden of Eden: “Excuse you, it’s not an apple, it’s a tennis ball.”
While discussing this case with my family over dinner last week (I may never talk of anything else again), my aunt told us that a friend of hers recently came across a totally naked old boy walking his dog along the Downs. He was trying to cure his cancer, apparently, having tried everything else.
The friend walked on unperturbed.
We probably don’t need hordes of naked ramblers popping up on footpaths, but is wandering naked around one’s own garden so terrible? Mr Herbert’s partner and her 18-year-old daughter were said to be “really upset” by the incident, but I believe most 18-year-olds these days have access to the internet, which means they’ve seen a lot worse than a middle-aged bottom.
I’m not advocating public flashing, but consider the difference between Air Marshal Turner and Charlie Perry, the football fan who peeled down his shorts and stuck a flare between his buttocks in Leicester Square during the Euros last summer. It was terrible behaviour, but many of us howled with laughter, and Twitter still talks fondly of “bum flare man”.
I don’t see why a quick airing as you amble among your own hollyhocks should be a matter for the police when the football lot were allowed to run riot. Let he (or, in my case, she) who has never darted naked into the garden to pluck a pair of pants from the washing line cast the first stone.
We’ve all seen bottoms before, we’ve all got bottoms, and, anyway, it’s deeply middle-class to be so uptight about nudity.