No sooner had I posted the ‘They Did it!’ post than Harry emailed me.

Here’s the text of it…

‘Hi (Ella), Remember that wager I offered and you wouldn’t take? When we passed the 200,000 views mark and I said SLN would reach 250,000 by Christmas? And you said no, it wouldn’t? I remember saying something along the lines of ‘if it does, you need a RL photo of yourself up on SLN’. And you turned down the bet!!!! In light of (Bebe’s) bravery in the most recent post, are you going to reconsider?????’

I hear you Harry. And you’re right. I didn’t take the bet on. But now you mention it…if I do it, will you?

Because after Nanni had taken the shot of Bebe, I went down to poolside too…and what I didn’t say in the previous post was that Nanni continued shooting. In fact, I asked her to do it. And so….for you, Harry, calling your bluff, hahaha, here’s a pic of me and Bebe by the pool. I, incidentally, am the one who has tanned….

Love, Ella.

Well, we’re just back from the beach. Quite a busy beach! I forgot it was Friday. The weekend! The Spanish who own houses here drive down for the weekend and waste no time in getting their kit off and onto the playa (or the urbanisation swimming pools).

The ‘village’ (the zona naturista) takes on a different atmosphere at weekends now that school’s out for summer.

So when we got there…the beach was busy! Very busy! If the girls had said ‘we fancy easing ourselves in more, we’re happy with half a dozen people in the mornings, but a couple of hundred is a bit overwhelming’, I’d have accepted it. But give them their dues, they made it there, nude, swam nude and returned home nude.

And when we got back to the complex there were a number of people in and around the pool. Neither Nanni or Bebe flinched and walked on, naked and unconcerned. Girls…you’re fully fledged naturists! You can tell me next week how you enjoyed it. (And we’re not finished yet!).

Bebe was enjoying it greatly, and threw her towel out on the grass to sunbathe while Nanni and I made our way back to the apartment. Once there, Nanni whipped out her camera and clicked off a shot of Bebe on the grass.

To my utter astonishment, Bebe says ‘there’s your shot for this post, Ella!’, thrilled and delighted at the photo. Apart from the photos each of them got with Kurt, I don’t think we’ve bothered with cameras until now. And we aren’t going to be filling memory cards with photos of each other in the nude!

‘Are you sure?’ I asked Bebe. ‘Once up there, I lose control. You could be all over the internet for years!’ (which is why I have always been exceptionally careful about my photos being used anywhere -although there are one or two out there folks! 🙂 )

‘I don’t care. It’s a lovely memory of a lovely holiday, and you can’t see my face. It’s just my bum! But I’ll know it’s me if it turns up on the internet when I’m 80! Post it! Post it!’ (Nanni also took one or two others of Bebe ‘sunny side up’, if you know what I mean, but these reside with Bebe forevermore).

And so….drum roll…a first for SLN. A real life photo of a staff associate. Bebe, I stand (naked) to applaud your bravery. You go, girl! 🙂

Ella

We want ice cream! So much so that I was despatched to the local Heladeria, ice cream shop, to pick it up. Why me? I’m the one whose name the car is hired in. I could walk it there in ten minutes, and even better than that walk a good 75% of the way nude, only pausing to throw on a sun dress at the edge of the naturist zone. But in this heat ice cream would be melted in the ten minutes before I got back here, so I drove.

And while I was away Kurt called in to say ‘goodbye’ (he’s off elsewhere for the weekend, and wanted to know when Mr Keng and I would be back. September, we’ll both be back in town).

‘Oh…what a pity’, said Bebe, ‘I was hoping you’d pose for a photo with me before we left’.

‘Sure…we can do it now’, said Kurt.

‘I..er..well…dressed!’, Bebe stammered, according to Nanni.

‘Nonsense’, said Kurt. He’s a naturist of many years standing, and has no hang-ups about being photographed nude.  (‘If Facebook allowed it’, he says, ‘I’d make a nude photo of me my profile photograph’).

So…even though it was taken on her camera, and she has full control of its use, Bebe rather embarrassedly posed with Kurt for a photo in which they’re both fully nude. And while they were at it, Nanni and Kurt got a photograph of them together, nude, too. Not something either lady may be sharing around much. Nanni’s photo shows her smiling, confident and nude, Bebe’s is somewhat more….shy!

Either way, they both now have a new Facebook friend, and are totally relaxed about being in nude, mixed company with this ‘stranger’.

So what’s left to tick off this naturist holiday bucket list? Ah, yes. Go to the beach, in daylight, and swim. Nude. In public. In front of a beach full of strangers.

So, ladies? You both up for a challenge?

‘Er…it depends’, Bebe says.

We’re going to the beach tonight, around 8pm. Sun’s going down so you shouldn’t get too burnt. You can wear flip flops. You can carry a towel in your hand to dry off after your dip. No sarongs! And we walk back the same way…totally nude.

Both have agreed. And if we do that, I think we can say they’ve really got to the point where they can say they’re naturist.

I’ll be back later tonight, or tomorrow morning, to let you know how they got on.

Bravo, ladies! Very, very well done!

Not so much just ‘today’ but over the entire week, we’ve witnessed at least two post-mastectomy who have not allowed their cancer survival to affect their love of naturism. Again, I can’t really dial up Harry and say ‘sort it, will you?’ and expect that he gets it done so I can post ‘in the moment’.

So I’ve had to do these photos myself and, yes, use my own avatar to try and capture a sense of it in each occasion.

The first lady, in typically naturist fashion, draped a towel over her missing boob.

The second lady has simply worn a bikini top and nothing else. Yes you can see the outline of boobs in my photo, but this mini-bikini top was in place over her flat chest. I only noticed she had had a mastectomy when she took the top off in a quiet corner of the pool area.

Well done ladies, I salute you both! 🙂

Ella.

.

A quiet morning in for us, apart from a now daily routine of making it to the beach around sunrise, now all quite nude. The girls haven’t made it to the pool yet in daylight while others have been around, nor to the beach. And the only reason we haven’t done so is because we’re having a ‘respite day’ from the ferocity of the sun. You have to pace these things!

Anyway, this morning’s observation is our own pool, with three generations of Spanish naturism sitting on the pool apron.

Gran, Grandpa, Mum and Dad and two small children.

Again not a scene I can or would replicate for SLN, but simply beautiful in an easy acceptance of their naked state. What’s more, Mum’s taking photos of the scene. How great will they look in the family album?

As they departed the pool another Spanish family returned from the beach. Mum, Dad and late teenage son. Once again, total acceptance of their naked bodies, the teenage son’s body acceptance and understanding of what a naked woman looks like (be it his mother or any of the women on the beach) will probably have fostered more of a respect for women. Stripped of ‘the great unknown’, quite literally, his teenage years will probably not have been blighted of a hunger to see what a naked woman looks like.

Now that our son can sort of hold a camera and be trusted not to drop it, we sometimes get him to take photographs of us when we’re on holiday. And if the RL Mr Keng and I kiss, the children say ‘Eugh! Mum and Dad are kissing!’ It’s never a case of ‘Mum and Dad are naked!’ That Spanish family’s children will grow up the same way. Proper, naturist parenting with proper body acceptance learned at an early age.

Ella

I was thinking about this the other day, and concluded that my profile (and photo) needed upgrading. How long since you upgraded yours? Ever even written yours?

It used to be, when I started in SL, that everyone read everyone else’s profiles. It was important, because it would often make the difference between striking up a conversation with someone, or continuing one, and not.

A profile would often give some indication whether or not a person had something ticking away in the grey matter, or if they were an airhead.

I’ve IM’ed Ella this morning to see if we, the staff of SLN, would have some kind of common profile pic, and also see to it that our profiles reference SLN. For example…

And by way of comparison…

These, incidentally, are shots I did of Ella (and I did a few of myself) for an SLN project that was never published. But hopefully we can come up with something in the next days to properly reflect who we are in SL.

Uploading a profile pic costs L$10. Writing something interesting about yourself costs nothing. Maybe it’s time you looked at your own profile and see if it is a proper reflection on who you are in your fantasy, Second Life.

Harry

My travelling companions are, as you will know by now, Celts. Pale of skin and easily burnt. So today ended up more or  less a ‘rest day’, a rest from the sun on a day when it reached 100 degrees, apparently. So a local told us.

Being Anglo-Saxon, my skin does lend itself to greater exposure, so while my friends remained in the apartment for most of the day -our early morning beach ramble excepted- under the shade of the balcony awning. Still enjoying the warmth, but not directly exposed to it.

It’s an important point to make. Many Brits will be heading for the sun in the next weeks, and whether it’s a naturist or textile location, remember that you’re exposing more skin to a fiercer sun than at home, and you should always take care to get the factor on everywhere likely to be exposed.

The same applies wherever you are in the world. Why look forward to a much-needed vacation, then overdo it on the first day or two, and end up in bed suffering from heatstroke or sunstroke? Not a lot of fun!

Now that the sun has gone down it has actually got breezy and chilly. We all came prepared with cardigans, on the basis that we will be landing in the UK at the weekend and, well, maybe winter coats would’ve been a better bet, packing wise. I’m sure it will be raining! 🙂

So the cardigans are on covering our freezing top halves. Oddly enough, below the waist, where we’re sheltered behind the apartment’s balcony wall, we’re all fine. So the scene right now is something like that I’ve captured below…times three!

Ella

While Ella’s away I’m supposed to be minding the shop 🙂

But what I’ve actually been doing is spending money on a new look to replicate how I’m looking in RL right now.

Yep…a ponytail and, well, ahem, girl fur has sprouted again, lol. Why? Well…as you may know by now, Ella and I are meeting up in Spain in July, and, you know, I thought I’d express solidarity in the sisterhood! 🙂 Maybe not quite the lady garden shown in the photo, but I’ve got another month to grow it out a bit, lol… Anyway, the absence of it in Vera Playa, according to Ella’s posts, makes me want to be different. 🙂

Pookes