Up until earlier this year I had been like most other English people in regards to public nudity – utterly horrified.

Nakedness was something to be ashamed of, and as such when I was younger I would have recurring nightmares (which are really quite common) about my school peers seeing me on the playground naked. In the swimming bath changing rooms I would change in a booth or else desperately clutch my towel awkwardly around myself whilst trying to untangle my not yet quite dry limbs and garments; lest everyone see my wobbly bits. My friends and I would titter at the older ladies walking around starkers in a nonchalant fashion, amazed they weren’t trying to hide their abundance of pubic hair.

Brain washed by magazines and TV, my teenage years were spent obsessing over food, silently competing with peers to see who could eat the least at lunch or…