Streaker: Nudity woe

Streaker: Nudity woe

Our junior school had its own swimming pool, which they were rather proud of. Twenty-five metres by ten, outdoors and freezing cold, it was still head-and-shoulders above anything other schools could boast. One got the feeling that the budget might have run out shortly before the end of the project, as the changing rooms were nothing but a couple of sheds with wooden benches pushed up against the walls.

The school budget did, however, stretch to getting some old bloke in to teach us how to swim, using the technique of shouting at us so much kids were too scared to get out of the water, except for all those times he got struck by lightning.

Any given swimming lesson would end in the same fashion – running the gauntlet, while your fellow students whipped your bare arse with wet towels whether you liked it or not. And that was just in the girls’.

After one particular swimming lesson when I was about eight years old, there was the usual skylarking, the flicking of bare arses with towels, peeking under the gap into the girls', building up to the usual riot and the neighbours complaining.

However, adult intervention was rather slow in arriving, and things started to get a little out of hand. Someone got towel-flicked on the willy, which brought a roar of laughter as the victim collapsed into a quivering foetal position, and an unsuspecting kid was wedgied to within an inch of his life. So, it was entirely justifiable, in the circumstances, that yours truly should end up standing stark naked on one of the changing room benches, swinging my trunks over my head singing "We are the streakers!"

Others joined in my chorus, and soon enough, those who were in a position to join in were also jumping around sans vetements waving items of clothing in the air chanting “We are the streakers! We are the streakers!”

Enter our teacher, the still smouldering swimming instructor, the headmaster, the entire board of school governors, the local vicar and his good friend the catholic priest from the church of St Thomas More, a couple of nuns, representatives of the local press and a photographer, all keen to find out about our lovely swimming pool and the lovely, charming children that use it.

My back to the action, I was the only one who had not registered their presence.

“We are the str......”

Doom.

Not one person backed me up. Not even the priest.