Although this is getting published on ‘day 6’, it stands on the cusp of day 5/6, as at midnight, as promised, there were random acts of nudity taking place.

The tradition runs that you write your mother’s name on a piece of paper, then walk backwards into the sea naked at midnight. 🙂

Well…of course I had to do it!!!!

And it has one of those rare occurrences in which there are photographs of me, lol, certainly so ill-defined that I’ll quite happily post them (probably next week when I get home and claim them off the camera card. Thanks to the passing teenage nude couple who cheerfully took my camera and did the clicking for me.

Oh yes, there was something remarkably communally spirited about the whole event, with several teenage to certainly 50s-odd people, from what I saw, as far as I could see under a perigee moon, communally naked and happy. 

Ella walks backwards, naked, into the sea at midnight on the festival of St Juan

Ella

This post is dedicated to the memory of Helena ‘Keng’

I’m writing this in the very early hours of September 23rd, the festival of St Juan in Andalusia (and elsewhere around the globe).

Tonight there will be fireworks and bonfires lit, and the place has certainly taken on a party vibe. Drawn to the music coming from a nearby beach-bar, a chiringuito, I found a lot of young people undertaking a weird hybrid of flamenco and bhangra. Music for dancing? You bet.

Some semi-nudity was in evidence amongst topless girls (which in this part of Spain barely qualifies as nudity), and at the chiringuito I visited a young guy who spoke good English said the bonfires would be lit at midnight, a lot of alcohol would be consumed and, yes indeed, full nudity was not beyond the boundaries of possibility.

Sadly, because of our domestic arrangements, it means that the RL Mr. Keng and I will have to attend this, not more than 200m from our apartment, in relay, rather than together, as a bit of midnight communal nudity and skinny dipping under a coincidental super moon sounds like it would be one of the great memories of life.

I wasn’t sure whether to hold back on today’s ‘postcard’ until it was all over, but I’ve opted to post this at breakfast time (in Europe) and then see what madness unfolds over the course of the day.

I look forward to it all.

Ella.