Death by sunflower...and corn

So much for my bold resolution to blog every three days. That's the problem with publishing your resolutions for the blogosphere to read: if you fail to make good on your lofty claims, people know. I was certain that once the corporate shackles had been struck, I was going to WRITE, dammit! WRITE EVERY DAY! I would work on my blog, my book, my short story collection.

Wanna hear my excuses?

1) August is always a busy time of year for me. You know, a peach lavender jam/pepper jelly/chili sauce/salsa kind of month. But thanks to my enterprising husband, it's also become a harvest-40-sunflowers-before-7:30 a.m./pick-185-cobs-of-corn-before-3 p.m. kind of month. It's become a fish-the-pink-umbrella-out-of-the-cornfield and check-the-money-jars and make-sure-you've-set-out-enough-corn kind of month. I ache all over. My fingers are raw and stained. So typing sucks. And by dinnertime, my brain is broken. So there.

2)Somehow, I'm busier being home all the time than I ever was at work. All that laundry and cleaning I used to ignore leap out at me now. Domestic guilt figures largely in this equation, too. Before, it was, "I just worked a full day. I'll deal with that pile of nasty underwear and socks tomorrow." Now it's, "Crap. I'm at home all day. By default, this nasty underwear pile is my responsibility." Plus the kids, hilarious and darling and joyful as they are, run me ragged. Dylan has learned to crawl out of his crib and Jade has decided afternoon naps are just so passe. They both want me to play and cuddle, which is nice, but such requests tend to be made when I am making supper, hanging laundry or am elbow deep in corn husks. And I only have the kidlets home with me Wed-Fri!!! I am an old, tired mama bear.

3) I bought a new Mac Powerbook in a fit of rage a few weeks ago. D's laptop kept flashing me rudely with the blue screen of death in the middle of important YouTube videos, so I finally cracked. It's not like me to make expensive online purchases, but hey, it was either that or dump D's laptop in the lake. But I am a technical dullard, so even though I was impressed with the mac's incredibly intuitive user instructions, it took me a little while to get it up and running. I still can't figure out how to connect to the wireless internet because D conveniently "forgets" to help me look for the password; I think it's his way of punishing me for "forgetting" to tell him about the purchase until the day it arrived. When I led him by the hand to the dining room table and silently pointed to my glowing new grey pet, he was quiet for a moment. Then: "You're gonna have to sell a lot of sunflowers, Kimmy."

4) Finally, I woke up this morning to NO INTERNET at home. Seriously? It's Monday, the kids' daycare day - my BLOGGING day, for pete's sakes. So I'm in the coffee shop, banging away on a sticky keyboard and downing my fourth cup of their potent java. I'm listening to the drone of the various breakfast clubs (aka senior citizen gossip sessions) around me, the guy who keeps whistling at his toddler like she's a chihuahua, and the crash of dishes through the kitchen door, which is beside my left knee.

Don't worry, I'll fill you in on the whole garden market experiment. Just as soon as I get groceries, make 16 jars of jalapeno pepper jelly and put out today's supply of sunflowers and corn.

Just beachy, thanks.

BLISS. I'm at the cottage for one perfect day of solitude. Then D and the kids are joining me for a week of happiness. I've been looking forward to this for months.

The cottage is best when my cousins and auntie are here, but it's pretty wonderful having it all to myself too. I walked the beach for an hour before lunch, since Jade and Dylan act like maniacs as soon as they catch sight of the water.

When you go for a walk by yourself, your thoughts run all over the place like a dog off a leash. They jump into the water, dash around and check out cottages, investigate strangers and then come back to you, panting with joy.

For example:

1. Girl, if my boyfriend got his jollies out of throwing wet sand at me while we swam in the lake, I would drown him. Slowly. I suggest you give it some thought.

2. That little girl just chimp-walked across the sand. I mean, seriously chimp-walked: on all fours, knuckles down, butt out. Whoa.

3. Just passed two elderly gentlemen out for a stroll. The one closest to me wore a checked, button down shirt, freshly pressed pants and spiffy loafers. I wonder what he wears out to dinner?

4. So many funky stones, so little pocket space.

5. Why is it that I come to the beach to listen to the waves, only to have my brain auto-tune them out five minutes later?

6. Where the bloody hell have all my childhood landmarks gone?! Where’s the lagoon? Where’s the cement boathouse that tells me I’m almost at the 8th? Why is diving rock ten feet closer to shore? Thank heavens the cottage still looks and smells like the cottage.

7. I love walking with my feet in the water. Hmm, a big rock. Well, it’s flat; I’ll just walk over it. And – UP – and – GAH! (splash) Okay, did anybody see that? Holy shit, I just fell off a perfectly flat rock. I am so old.

8. Hello little doggie. Aren’t you cute? (pat pat) That’s it, go on now. Seriously…go away. Hey, your owner is calling you - get lost!

9. I don’t see the blue chairs. Where are the blue chairs? Did I pass the cottage? Good grief, where the hell am I???

10. Empty pockets, rinse sandy feet, remove wet pants. Open a bottle of Coke, squeeze the lime, sigh with pleasure.

I can't wait to tuck the kids into the bedroom I used to use when I was little, read my book in companionable silence with D (who will be reading his Blackberry), fall asleep listening to the crash and roar of the waves and get sandy & wet with the kiddies in the morning. This is my bliss.

The sum of all fears: Me vs. the Zero Turn

If you're self-employed, unemployed or on sabbatical, the last thing you want to hear is, "So, what did you do all day?"

It's one of those questions that can be asked with the sweetest of innocence; other times it's as pointed as a knife. Regardless of the intent, those words make me want to bare my teeth and leap on the person who has said it like a feral dog. GRRRR! You still wanna know what I did all day? Well, do ya, punk??

Defensive-slash-overreactive much? Just a bit.

The thing is, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing all day. Change diapers, play with the kids, do the dishes, check Facecrack, wipe up pee, make supper, fingerpaint, run a load of laundry, yeah yeah yeah. But is that all? I feel like I should be renovating the house, or sewing curtains or teaching my kids French. That's the hard part of losing your job: suddenly, there's too much freedom. So when D asks me that question, sometimes with true interest, sometimes with a glint of evil in his eye, my inner Hound strains for release.

Anyway, one thing I CAN do when the kids aren't around is mow the lawn. My beloved Jean Green underwent extensive, expensive repairs last month, somehow rendering her even more unreliable than usual. Which leaves me the garden shears or D's giant, roaring zero-turn tractor, of which I am terrified.

D has been trying to convince me to use the zero-turn for three years. His father bought it, but gave it to us after he discovered that running it hurt his back, and D's mom, who can drive every piece of equipment on the farm, refuses to get on it. Yet somehow, my darling man thinks his precious wife should be fully capable of operating this nasty behemoth of a machine.

The first day he borrowed it from his Dad, just to, you know, "see what she runs like," he grinned so hard his face nearly split. As he spun around the yard in figure-eights, spewing fountains of grass all over my flowers, his tongue protruded from his mouth in what I could only guess was a childlike tractor noise. I knew right then that Jean Green and I were doomed. It was just a matter of time.

The zero-turn has a roll bar and a seatbelt. It also has scary graphics depicting stick figures in various stages of decapitation and mutilation. That alone has been enough to convince me that me and Jean Green are just fine, thanks, so don't bug us with your "fancy" mowers. Jean may plod along at the speed of a dying caterpillar, but she isn't going to chop my head off. And Jean's only graphics are of a rabbit to indicate her highest speed (aforementioned dying caterpillar) and a turtle for her slowest speed (dead caterpillar).

So until today, I've always managed to avoid zero-turn duty ("Jean will be jealous;" "I'm too tired;" "I don't wanna!"). But now that Jean needs a battery boost every time I need to start her, and my husband keeps asking me that wretched question, I decided to suck it up and risk my stupid life mowing the stupid lawn with the stupid zero turn.

I managed to get it started and back out of the barn without smashing into anything, and I even figured out how to turn on the blades. But I had to call my brother-in-law to figure out how to lower the deck. Which sucked, because I would have preferred my stupidity to have gone undiscussed between the brothers Lowry. I wanted D to come home to a splendid looking lawn and a nonchalant wife; instead, he'll ignore anything I tell him and ask Carm how it went instead.

Carm arrived with the same look on his face he has every time he has to help me with something, probably similar to the look I have when wiping my kids' butts.

When I moaned about Jean Green being out of commission, he shrugged and gestured to the beast in my driveway. "What's wrong with this one?"

"I hate it," I said. "The controls are too sensitive."

"Then it should be pefect. I thought you women were supposed to be all sensitive and stuff."

"Ha ha," I said. "Just help me figure it out."

We got the zero-turn going and I listened impatiently to Carm's instructions. I waved him off, and jerked down the lane to practise on the back lawn, which was crispy and didn't have any hills. I nearly scraped my leg off on the barn and yelped in terror at the sudden appearance of a fence post before I realized that to go right, I had to pull left, and vice versa. Who the hell designed this stupid thing? Probably some divorced guy. A grasshopper sprang down my shirt and I decided the roll-bar and seat-belt weren't such bad ideas after all. Then I realized Carm had follwed me in his truck and was observing my progress.

"GO AWAY!" I screamed, but he got out of the truck, walked over and turned up the throttle.

"Makes 'er go better!" he shouted.

"I DON'T WANT TO GO BETTER!" I screeched, careening away from him. "MOVE THE DAMN TRUCK!" I pictured myself bashing my father-in-law's beautiful new vehicle and going down in the Lowry annals as the daughter-in-law too stupid to drive a zero-turn. Carm just smiled.

I lurched off in the opposite direction in a gasoline-powered huff, praying I would get around the corner of the barn and out of sight so I could die in privacy. Carm rolled slowly down the lane in the truck to check me out. I ignored him so hard I nearly drove into the alfalfa field.

26 close-calls, two massacred solar lamps and a deep desire for a sports bra later, I've got all the flat, non-foliaged parts of the lawn cut. It hurts to turn my head to the right and my throat is raw from screams of terror. I am also covered in a fine coat of grass clippings and I think I sunburned a nipple (Note to self: never wear a tube-top on a zero-turn). But now I've got a good frigging answer when D asks me what I've done all day. And I can even make the tractor noise to prove it.

Whatcha cookin'?

Now that I am a full-fledged housefrau, I have a little more time to concoct edible delights. You know, move past the jell-o-with-whipped-cream phase into more of a home-made-brownies-with-bailey's phase of cooking.

Lately, I've been pretending that I own a little bistro. Please note that I do not aspire to actually owning a bistro. I could think of nothing more horrifying than making people pay me to eat my sometimes dubious cooking. But when I'm in the kitchen, I day dream a lot, and one of my fantasies is that I'm the owner of a funky restaurant in Kinkytown and I'm being interviewed by some idiot on the Food network about my fascinating menu.

It often goes something like this:

Idiot from Food Network: So tell us about today's exciting features!
Funky Bistro Owner (aka Me): Well, in the summer we make both a hot soup and a cold soup -
Idiot: Uh Huh! Wow! Cold soup!
FBO: - and a choice of two daily salads that change every day -
Idiot: Wow! Cuz people really love salads!
FBO: (shoots Idiot a look of annoyance) - Yes. Right. So, we have favourites that stay on the menu permanently, like our chili, and we always offer a few gluten-free options -
Idiot: Oh yeah, my sister's totally into the gluten free movement, that's becoming very popular!
FBO: (fingering a sharp skewer) It's not a movement. People have gluten intolerances that make them sick.
Idiot: True, true, but it's a great way to lose weight, isn't it! I love these foodie trends!
FBO (skewers Idiot through heart, hides him in compost pile)

Ahem.

For some reason, having these imaginary interviews and restaurant fantasies inspires me to make different stuff for dinner. I picture myself in the bistro, deciding that today's special will be Thai-inspired, so I'll take the leftover BBQ'd meat from last night, slice it up and roll the meaty goodness inside delicate rice-paper wraps, along with whatever wilty vegetables I can find in the crisper. I'll whip up some peanut sauce (which is different almost every time I make it because I can't remember the real recipe, which came from my vegetarian pal who never writes his recipes down anyway), fry up some tofu, and there we go. Or I'll do a running commentary as I blend two recipes together for a batch of soup, throwing in spices that seem to fit, running out to the garden for a handful of dill or chives and pretending it's part of the organic meadow that magically grows behind the bistro. It's weird, but it works.

Yesterday, I made the "daily salad" specials: wild rice with apple, old cheddar, celery, onion and pumpkin seeds in a honey-dijon dressing, and an improvised raw broccoli/cauliflower salad with shredded carrot, marble cheese, green onion and bacon. Tonight I'm going to make curried summer squash soup, sourced from local farmers, which will be served cold or warm and comes with a side of toasted pita bread for $2.99 a cup or $4.99 a bow- um, oops.

Jade has caught me muttering to myself on more than one occasion in the kitchen; she doesn't say anything, just looks around to see who I'm talking to, and flounces out again when there's nobody interesting in sight. I've heard her having dozens of conversations with imaginary characters

- including the infamous "Mr. Ant" - so perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the quirky tree.

And so far, I have not skewered anyone in real life.

Just DO IT

D hates sitting still. He's one of those annoying souls who always likes to be "doing something." He doesn't care if it's something fun, or pleasurable; in fact, the more horrid the task, the more he feels as though he's "done something." Once, when I told him to please relax, he freaked out and told me that if there's one thing he hates, it's when people tell him to relax. "I don't need to relax!" he'd yelled. Which, to me, made his need to relax painfully evident, but I don't use that word around him anymore, just to be safe.

D especially hates weekend mornings where the kids watch Treehouse while I sit around with a book, my only goal being to drink an entire cup of coffee before its temperature plunges to that of an iced tea.

"C'mon, c'mon, let's DO something!" he growled at me this past Sunday. I looked up from The Tiger's Wife and blinked.

"I am doing something," I said. "I'm reading."

He did that little dance of rage he does whenever the printed word has replaced him in my hierarchy of needs, which is kind of often. "Kim, reading a book is not DOING anything. We never DO ANYTHING! I hate books!" And he stomped out of the room making as much noise as his croc-clad feet would allow. The front door clunked shut; the screen door slammed.

My sister, who was visiting for the weekend, rolled her eyes. She's really good at rolling her eyes. I shrugged and took a slurp of my coffee. The kids remained blissfully absorbed in the acid-trip antics of Toopy & Binoo. D would find something to do, and hopefully leave us in peace for another hour. We got about three and a half minutes before the front door clunked open again.

The cupboard where we hang all our keys jangled violently; D stomped back in the room and ordered the kids to get their shoes on and turn off the TV. They were going to the park, dammit! Well, he didn't actually say "dammit" but his eyes were blazing and his nostrils were flared and I'm pretty sure he wanted to say "Dammit!" or "By God!" or "By Crackie!" or something equally commanding. Instead, he glared at my sister and I and said, "We're going to the park. You two can sit here all day. But we're DOING SOMETHING."

The kids wailed and complained and eventually got suited up and hauled out the door. I looked at my sister. We did a simultaneous eye roll, which is something siblings who have lived with a demanding and unreasonable parent learn to do very well.

Long story short, my sister and I were supposed to go to the cottage and visit my aunt whilst D entertained the kids by DOING SOMETHING. Instead, we fell asleep, waking only when D's car pulled up in the driveway. I won't print what he said to me, but I ended up promising him that we would DO SOMETHING together as a family later that night.

I thought he'd punish us with an evening of hoeing sweet corn or digging trenches. That the SOMETHING turned out to be biking down the 6th Concession hill and swimming at the public beach was a happy surprise. The water was beautiful, the beach practically deserted. The kids were gung-ho and the sandbar was shallow enough for them to navigate by themselves. I sighed with happiness as I stripped off my shorts and shoes and squished Dylan's arms into his "wife-jacket." Sometimes my husband DID SOMETHING right.

And then D took off his shorts.

I heard my sister's sharp intake of breath; I turned to see him heading for the water with Jade in tow. I wondered for a minute why he was wearing a pair of my black panties. And then I knew: he was punishing us by wearing the dreaded speedo. In public.

"Oh my God," whispered my sister. "I don't know where to look." We stood there, frozen in the sand by the sight of my husband's daring attire.

D has been teasing me about purchasing and wearing a speedo for as long as we've been dating. "Don't you think I would look sexy?" he'd ask. "Really Kim, don't you want to see me in a speedo? I bet you do."

When he actually produced one a few summers ago, I was convinced he was joking, just taking the piss out of his naive wife. He'd dangle it in front of me from time to time, but he never wore it outside the house. I figured a boy from Bruce county would never, ever wear a speedo in public anyway. Would he?

The answer to that question bobbed around the waves of the 6th. D splashed, swam, played with the kids, and hung out (not literally) on the beach, unperturbed that his manly bits were snuggled in a very small piece of material in an area in which he "might know someone."

Since he's usually pretty shy about this type of thing, I was pretty shocked. D's expression wavered somewhere between nonchalant and smug. Even when he glanced down the beach and saw another guy playing with his dogs and said, "Oh man. I know that guy from work," he didn't rush to put his board shorts back on. He was the master of his domain, and he'd definitely DONE SOMETHING that weekend: reduced his wife to speechless wonder, having humbled her with a banana hammock.

"Don't get lost in the maze, Mummy..."

After 17 years, I resigned from my job.

Yeah, that sentence makes it sound profound, like I've decided to strike out on my own and tackle writing, mummyhood and the art of jam making while waving a triumphant middle finger to THE MAN. But it really isn't that romantic. Just a case of office politics, "business decisions" and a month-long shower in corporate crap.

I've had a pretty sweet deal: working from home with a team that was smart and well-regarded, in a job I liked and was good at. Then came the news: our work from home arrangement was being terminated. Crap.

The reasons management decided to cut our work from home programme still haven't been made transparent, but suffice it to say that I was the only one with a 2 hour commute, so the message to me was loud and clear. Ciao baby, and thanks for all the fish.

The powers that be were professional enough to allow me to keep my job until the end of August, which is more than they technically needed to, but the atmosphere had become so unhealthy that I knew I couldn't hang on that long. Hurt feelings and a bruised ego didn't help matters much, either. And when I summoned up my courage and voiced my opinions on the whole scenario to my bosses, it did nothing to improve an already unpleasant situation. It got harder and harder to breathe every time I logged in to work, so I gave my two weeks' notice and got the hell outta Dodge.

I took Jade to work with me on Friday, because I figured she should experience the place to which I've devoted the last 17 years of my professional life. I wanted her to know what my office looked like, meet the people who had been my friends and colleagues for so long, and get a taste of what Mummy did all day.

Jade received her security card necklace, eyed it with interest and announced, "Now I'm pretty just like Daddy!" (D wears a security card every day), making the security guard - one of my favourite faces in the office - grin.

As I guided my daughter down the labrynthine path to my department, she studied the neutral fabric walls, the stained carpets, the photos and posters and whiteboards that adorned the cubicles. She said hi to people I didn't even know, and waved her security card at them in case they doubted her right to be there.

When we finally reached the hotel office where I usually set up camp for my monthly visits, Jade's mouth dropped open. My crazy colleagues, following a time-honoured tradition on our team, had decorated my office both with photos of things I hated (gnarly man-feet, feet with rotting toenails) and things I loved (Second Cup logos, the dancing spiderman gif) plus balloons and streamers. I noticed two tiny potted roses, which I instantly knew were a quiet tribute to my little lost daughter; I lit up when I saw photos of my friends and I at office Christmas parties, my wedding, Hallowe'en contests. Jade was enchanted; my vision started to blur. They were sending me off with a heartfelt bang.

After Jade had visited my colleagues and the cafeteria, and done a few downward facing dogs in the aisle, I took her back through the cubes to the front door, where my sister was waiting. "Don't get lost in the maze, Mumma," my daughter warned me. Probably the best advice I'd get all day.

Back at my desk, I cracked open the boxes of doughnuts I'd brought from the Lucknow bakery and took a big breath. Bring it on, I thought, and sent an email to friends to let them know my corporate wake had begun.

The doughnuts began to disappear, and I said goodbye to people I'd worked with for almost two decades, answered questions (No, I wasn't going to take up farming; yes, I would be back to sell my jam), laughed at kooky memories, gave and received hugs, wiped tears and held back my own. I hate crying; I especially hate crying in the office. Tears just seem so incongruous with cubicles. So I sucked it up and laughed and joked instead.

My team had a final pita lunch together, which was equal bits hilarious and soggy. We talked about all the office episodes our little group had collected over the years: fibre pills, exploding juice cans, Second Cup runs, broken noses and first impressions. Our tradition of getting Pita Pit lunches to celebrate all things big and small seemed fitting, but when my friends brought out gifts and cards the tone of our little party changed. Goodbyes suck.

I wish I could say I got through the rest of the day without a sniffle, that I walked out of there with my head held high. But I didn't. A few careless remarks from my boss and two zero-hour embraces from beloved colleagues broke my resolve; the tears welled up, and I stumbled out of the maze and through the jaws of death one last time with red eyes and a heavy heart.

So here I am, on my second day of freedom, contemplating the months ahead and sighing over the years behind me. I'm giving myself permission to grieve, feel pissed off and a bit lonely. I'm also allowing myself to roll on the floor with the kids until 9 p.m., hang laundry in my underwear, drink coffee on the deck with the chipmunk and garden in my bare feet. I plan to laugh, swim, pick sweetcorn, build sandcastles and drink a lot of wine. I'm going to write and get jamming. I'm going to be happy, eventually.

And, if I'm honest with myself, I may just owe the company a great debt. I was too loyal to leave on my own, to nervous to jump off the edge into unemployment. When they asked me to resign, they also handed me an oyster. Whether I find any pearls inside is up to me.

The skinny on dipping

Every year, around this time of summer, I like to try and coerce my husband to take off all his clothes and do something outrageous.

Way back when, on a trip to California, I shamed him into wiggling out of his clothes and jumping into the crashing surf on Venice Beach, clad only in his trusty tighty whities. He still has nightmares about it today: "What if LAPD flew over us in a helicopter and arrested me for public indecency?" "What if those people down the beach from us could, you know, see it?"

When we first moved to Someday, I convinced him to go skinny dipping at Emmerton beach on a muggy July night. I had to use all my powers of persuasion and eye-rolling to get him to strip it all off and dash into the water. We were newlyweds, we didn't have kids, and I could still get him to do things that were a bit edgy. And I always stripped down first.

Several summers ago, we got caught outside in a beautiful warm rain in the back meadow. He was on the tractor and I was gathering flowers. I noticed that the barn downspout had turned into a waterfall; I stripped off my clothes and stood underneath it, laughing. "Come on!!!" I yelled at him. He just shook his head, grinning like a sheepish kid, and stayed on the tractor, despite my coaxing, cajoling and harrassment. I could tell he wanted to; he just lacked a little nerve. That winter, he confided that he would always regret not having jumped down and joined me. Humph.

He made up for his reticence the year I was pregnant with Dylan; we were in the thick of a big summer rainstorm, complete with thunder and lightning. My sister and I were hiding in the house. D had come in just before the storm hit, all sweaty from mowing the lawn.

"I gotta take a shower." he said.
"A shower? Just run outside," I suggested.
"What? In a storm? You're nuts. Plus your sister will see me."
"Oh, don't be such a baby," I said. "Just go and do it. It'll be fun! I dare ya."

After a moment's hesitation, he actually started taking off his clothes. He solemnly handed me his glasses, said, "If I get hit by lightning, it's your fault," and dashed out into the storm, wearing only his orange crocs. It was quite a sight. I felt a surge of pride...and terror, as the thunder crashed and my beloved husband's shapely behind disappeared out of sight of the house.

He eventually made it back in one soggy piece, dripping and exhilarated. I dutifully waited in the shanty with a towel and congratulations. There's just something about being naked outside that makes you feel alive, and I was glad he was finally getting on board.

I'm afraid my children have inherited my penchant for nudity, as their favourite time of day is that fifteen minute interval between tooth brushing and bedtime where they are allowed to shed their clothes and run around shrieking "Naked naked NUDIE!!!" Or maybe it's just the natural tendency of a toddler to want to be unencumbered by the annoying contraints of diapers, underwear, and other assorted bits of bodily confinement. I can't say I blame them.

We shared a moment of naked solidarity the other day when it was so hot I wanted to lock myself in the freezer. I don't do well in the heat, and neither does my son. We both end up red-faced and sweaty with the temper of a rabid pitbull when the thermometer goes anywhere above 75 degrees, so inheriting our cousins' kiddie pool last summer was a godsend. After a gruelling bike ride to the cottage and back, we stripped Jade and Dyl down and let them soak in the nice, cool water. After enduring sensitive comments from my husband ("Gee Kimmmy, are ya hot? Look kids, it's sweaty Kim!"), I proceeded to tear off my clothes and wade into the pool with the kids, much to their squealing delight. I think D was somewhere between horrified and turned on, but I was in the zone: naked, cool, and surrounded by happy kidlets.

It may be a long hot summer, but at least some of us will be naked enough to enjoy it.