Monthly Archives: March 2014

Happy Mother’s Day!

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If you’re in the UK you’ll be aware today (Sunday) was Mother’s Day.

I spent my day with my family, going out for lunch and then walking off a lovely meal with a walk on a Spring-like, warm afternoon on the beach. And as the clocks changed to British Summer Time (an hour less in bed last night, but an 8pm sunset and a stretch in the evenings) overnight, I spent some time -still accompanied by the children and the RL Mr. Keng, putting out our solar lights in the garden. Looking out from the study, they’re looking magnificent and hopefully presage a long, warm, sunny summer ahead.

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If you’re a Mum, or have a Mum, I hope you spent time together today or, if separated by distance, at least gave her a call. Sadly, I wasn’t in a position to visit my mother’s grave today -she’s buried in a wholly different part of the UK- but I will be making that visit soon. The day put me in reflective mood, recalling the good relationship we had when she was alive, and how her encouragement towards many things still informs my attitudes today. And I find myself trying to be equally encouraging to my own children. In that respect, she still remains alive, guiding me, teaching them.

Ella.

“If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way.” —Oscar Wilde

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I saw this photo online, with words by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, imposed on a nude model’s body.

True words, and something I felt we had to replicate. Diane came up with the following re-invention of the work.

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Not quite the body-painting of the original…but as true as Galeano’s words.

 

You can find more quotes on nudity, or naturism, here and here and here.

 

Ella

 

 

Purdah & the tax year end

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For many people working in any form of ‘admin’ capacity in the UK, the next two weeks will be crazily busy due to the ‘tax year end’ (I would have hyperlinked this if it weren’t for the fact that life is far too short to be spent clicking links to tax related matters unless you’re being paid for it).

I know that in my line of work -and I’m not even fully immersed in the ‘admin’ end of things- we’re up to our necks in this tedious process, and last week and next week I’ve been working 12 hour days and coming home brain-dead and computered-out, hence the lack of posts, or even the desire to sift through Barbara or Pookes’ work and say ‘we’ll publish that’. It’s only today that I’ve even felt remotely interested in turning a computer on for pleasureable purposes. And that is also likely to be the case next week. So SLN postings will be low.

On the upside, my employers recognise the issues involved for many of us and having to work stupidly long days is offset by the fact that they give us a lot of time off in the wake of this period, so I’ll get the good ship SLN back onto an even keel in mid-April when I’m off more than I’m working.

I’ll try and get a few posts up over the weekend, but it’ll be back to a period of self-imposed purdah next week. Sadly, it’s just another of those periods where RL must take precedence over SL.

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Another 12 hour day over, Ella wonders if she can be bothered heading home. Surely sleeping on a nearby bench and heading straight back in at 900am makes more sense? 🙂

 

Ella

 

Flamingoes

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Occasionally, when in Spain, I’ll witness a couple of flamingoes flying parallel to the beach. They’re on their way down to Cabo de Gata National Park, where there are nesting/breeding grounds. I have to confess I don’t know a lot about birds or birdwatching.

There are a couple of naturist beaches within the park itself, but I’ve never visited them. It’s still nice to see less common wildlife ‘on the wing’, though, and we keep promising ourselves a drive down there some time and match a bit of naturist sea & sunbathing to connecting with wildlife.

Not so much in the way of wildlife breeding/nesting grounds in SL, but Diane took a model along to an SL zoo, where we got this photo of a naturist ‘communing’ with flamingoes. I think the lesson here is ‘look hard enough and you’ll find all manner of human (and wild) life is available in SL’.

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In case you aren’t sure…here’s the real thing, wading around in the real Cabo de Gata.

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Ella

Mud, mud, glorious mud.

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Mud, mud, glorious mud,

there’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood

So sang popular (in the UK) 1950s/60s ‘music hall’ act Flanders & Swann. You can see/hear them performing the song in question here. (It’s actual title is ‘The Hippopotamus Song’).

Now, we naturists have a thing about mud. We can’t wallow around in it enough, it seems!

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And why not? Mud baths have long been associated with providing health benefits, and many of France’s naturist resorts will have some sort of spa on-site where residents can indulge themselves in all manner of hydro-therapy treatments, mud baths and massage. But even away from a more organised ‘well being’ sense of a mud bath making you feel cleansed and refreshed, we -naturists- also seem to enjoy rolling around in it too. Not just naturists…there’s textile mud baths around the globe where people enjoy the experience of being enveloped in the stuff!

Cards on the table here. It’s something I’ve never done. More through a lack of opportunity than lack of desire. Oh, sure, I’ve gone for spa weekends with girlfriends (generally as part of a ‘hen do’ -readers around the globe may know these as ‘bachelorette parties’) but frankly the idea of wearing a swimsuit in one of these places seems to defeat the purpose. So that’s on my naturist ‘bucket list’.

In the context of SL, I’ve not yet seen a ‘mud’ layer for a skin (probably would be best designed as a tattoo layer), nor have I seen any any ‘mud baths’ either in the wilds, or as part of an SL spa, so I can’t really give you SL photos of that experience. A few years ago ‘mud wrestling’ seemed to be popular at some of SL’s naturist locations, but that’s not quite the same thing. So a mud bath is something I’ve not been able to try in SL either! Maybe someone will come up with a mud skin tattoo layer soon, and then we can replicate this RL naturist experience in SL.

Ella.

Edited to add…Shortly after posting this I was surfing some SL blogs and noticed the Kirstentacular blog had a gardening scene in which a tattoo layer called ‘digging in the dirt’ was used to denote mud on several parts of the avi’s body. So far my attempts to locate Miss Shippe’s Studio in world have come up blank, as has this tattoo layer on Miss Shippe’s marketplace presence. I’ll keep looking and get back to you.

No Swimsuit Day

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Dimanche 29 juin 2014, c’est la “Journée sans Maillot”

Sunday, June 29, 2014 is the “Day without Swimsuit”

I’ve previously been aware that Spanish naturists have a day where they promote a ‘dia sin ropa’ (a day without swimsuits -it’s in July) but I’ve just recently learned that the French have an equivalent, a ‘journee sans maillot’.

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As far as I’m aware, the International Naturist Federation try to promote naturism by encouraging people (naturist and non naturist alike) to leave their swimsuit at home and just use their birthday suit for swimming and sunbathing, even if the beach is ‘textile’.

I recently heard a rumour that the Spanish variant, in the Vera Playa area, is to include and entire weekend of events, with a nude run through the area on the Saturday, another attempt to break the World Skinny Dip record on the Sunday (the actual ‘dia sin ropa’ -day without swimsuits) and then the nearby water park block-booked on Monday for the exclusive use of naturists. Still waiting for confirmation of this, and still considering us heading out there for that weekend, but I’ve not booked yet. I think it all sounds like an extremely exciting, positive range of events that can only show naturism in a positive light.

Even if we don’t make it out for the weekend, we’ll certainly be covering both the French version in June, and the Spanish version, in July here on SLN!

Ella

please note: if you hear of other national naturist associations doing anything similar, let me know and we’ll do our best to a) keep the readership informed and b) do our usual ‘replication in SL’ coverage.

Fab Free 30 Days List

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The Fab Free 30 Days List has been updated! I’m not in a postion to avail, but there’s some fab (free) items to gather if you’re a new avatar. Even naturists need a wardrobe, and I note that some of the stops on the updated list include skins and hair, so there’s no excuse not to have a fab (free) looking avatar whether you’re clothed or naked.wendy2930_001b

 

Harry says…‘I tp’ed over to the current new player landing point and, in open chat, asked if anyone wanted free skins/hair to make themselves look better. I got little positive response, and I guess that was on the basis that people are naturally suspicious of others’ agendas. Which is reasonable enough. I would have been the same in their position. Eventually, however, I did get one new avatar to agree. I did position my agenda -‘can I take a nude photo of you for the blog’- upfront, mind! 30 minutes later, the new avatar had lost her handbag and ginger hair, and was in possession of a good looking skin and hair from stores on the 30 Days List. I think she was rather pleased to have taken the chance on trusting me in the end. I’d suggest that new avatars, if they don’t wish to trust a stranger with a camera, work their way through the list from top to bottom and get an inventory full of good looking fashion sorted out as their top priority. 30 days goes by so quickly! The lady’s ‘payment’ for agreeing was a decent sized wardrobe, and I provided her with a portfolio of photos for her to use as she wishes, plus a profile pic’.

There you are ladies (and gents). Great advice. Yes, Harry is correct. Bookmark the 30 days list and begin to work your way through it, pronto!

Pookes

A relaxed approach to the beach

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I’ve no idea who this competitor at some sort of swimming championships in Sevilla, 2004 may be, but an analysis of the photograph pretty much spells out a casual approach to beach (semi) nudity in large parts of Europe. No upper body tanlines, and a clear tanline on her lower half. It suggests that at least some of her outdoors life in summer is pretty much spent topless, wearing only a bikini thong.

Pookes

The Book Cover Meme

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While scouring the SL blogs, a regular occurrence -they sometimes inform what the content of this blog is going to be-  I discovered this blog entry at the Cozey Second Life blog, and thought that it was a terrific idea to design a book cover (based on a real or imagined book) related to SL. An astonishingly good idea, in fact!

There are numerous books available related to the topic of naturism, and we regularly do a ‘front cover’ to the copies of SLN magazine, but it never occurred to me to replicate book covers.

The meme, incidentally, also has a terrific flickr page.

And so I set our photographers, Diane and Harry, a challenge to create their very own book cover, based on one of the following naturist themed books available on Amazon (by default, the link is the Amazon UK site).

Going Bare

Nice Girls can be Nudists too

Being Naked

Naked Crow

101 Things to do Naked

(note, I’ve selected naturist themed books from their site, all available in Kindle editions, and all under ÂŁ3.00 in price -i.e. around $2.00. The challenge was to utilise the title, its artwork, or both, as a starting point for their photos, which had to be ‘finished’ with some text, and their own name as ‘author’. Just a bit of fun…so let’s see what they’ve come up with…)

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Harry says… ‘ Does anyone else remember the US TV series ‘Naked City‘? I have to confess my memory may be slightly flawed here, in that I recall it being shown on British television long after its original showing in the States. I took its famous closing narration, ‘there are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them’ as my starting point, rather than the titles suggested by Ella. And that tag-line suggested film noir to me, so I tried to create a noirish cover. And I used a ‘typewriter’ font to give a sense of pulp fiction. (The genre, not the movie). I’m pretty pleased with the result, the first idea I had to realise. Of course, that’s not to say the first idea is always the best (but in my view it is in this instance), so I’ve added the initial raw photograph (below).

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Harry continues… ‘And then I tried to create an impression of that pulp novel being handed around amongst afficionados of the genre, and somewhere along the line it has suffered some coffee or water damage, with the cover ending up seriously stained. So the version below attempted to re-create that effect. In the end, though, the first version probably remains what I feel is the best version.’

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Diane avoided my suggested reading list too, to replicate a version of a real life book, The Perfumed Garden, a classic of Arabian erotic writing. You can read a copy (pdf file) here. The ‘perfumed garden’, incidentally, refers to a lady’s unhaved genital area!

I guess this book is, in some sense, a 15th century copy of the Kama Sutra.

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Both terrific ideas, guys, but when are you going to do one for one of my book list!!!! 🙂

Ella