Some time last year I went to a nude beach and unexpectedly found I was the only one on it. Sand as far as the eye could see, with nothing visible except for the seagulls and occasional pieces of driftwood. This was Shell Bay near Swanage so if you have been there you will know that there are dunes and grass behind the beach, so there may well have been people in there somewhere. Although having said that I did walk the full length of the nude part – and a lot of the non-nude part too – and came back through the dunes without seeing anyone, so it is possible that I really was the only one there.

The weather was great, and I think it was just that it was on the edge of one of the school holidays, so the people with kids had left, and the others hadn’t arrived yet. Whatever the reason, for the first couple of hours of being there I was completely alone.

Anyway, around mid afternoon I had just come back from a swim and was lying in the sun to dry off when a woman appeared from the dunes behind me and walked all the way down to where I was sitting. She put down her stuff about 2 metres away from me, stripped off, and went for a swim. She was in the water for maybe 10 minutes when she came back, slowly walking up the beach directly towards me. As she got close I remember saying something about being surprised how empty the place was and wondering where everyone was. She ignored me, but picked up her towel, drubbed her hair, then sat down turned mostly in my direction.

Now I’m the sort of person who will talk to anyone, anywhere, whatever the situation. I tend to rein that in a bit on nude beaches because most people seem to prefer to be left alone there, but when someone comes and sits down almost within touching distance on a mile-long deserted beach, I think I could be forgiven for assuming that person might be up for a bit of small talk. And yet when I tried again and asked if she was local or had travelled there like me, she answered as shortly as possible (“Local”), grabbed her stuff, and mumbling some comment about not being left alone anywhere she headed back into the dunes.

Apparently small-talk really was not her thing!

This is not a complaint about that woman, although I have to say that the whole encounter did leave me rather confused. No, this is a reminder that whilst not wanting to be hassled, pursued, or even talked-to on a beach (or anywhere else) is completely valid and entirely your choice, your own body language can sometimes send out the wrong signals. She chose to sit right next to me on an empty beach, and yet apparently wanted to be left completely alone. If the beach had been packed and there was nowhere else to sit I could understand that, and I would have been unlikely to try to talk to her then anyway unless she had initiated contact. But her choice to sit so close to me that it would have been hard to not talk to her, on a day where she could have easily sat anywhere else pretty much guaranteed that I would say something.

So unless you intend to go out and have an argument, think a bit before you sit. It saves confusion.