St. Mallory's Forever!

20. ABBY: Back to nature.

Isn't it odd how one can make a resolution to save money and hold it for months and months on end, and then watch all that resolve leap out of the nearest window the moment one spots a particularly irresistible pair of shoes?

I can resist anything but temptation.

After our little jaunt in the Music Shop of Supreme Oddness, the Don and I treated everyone to a round tour of our favourite haunts. Well, when I say "treated" I mean we went through the same route we do every time we come into Brighton. We worked this system out long ago in Lower Fifth, and it's stuck ever since. Basically, we devise a route that allows us to visit everywhere that any member of our group wants to go, without the need to double back and blunder in circles like blithering idiots. Well, that's the theory anyway.

As this was the first trip of the year, there were lots of desirable locations – the Don and I went hunting for disco attire in New Look, Pip raided Accessorise (she hoards jewellery worse than a particularly miserly dragon), Christie nipped into Abercrombie and Fitch to see if they had a t-shirt she was after – inevitably triggering lots of snooty play-acting from the rest of us, complete with idiotic accents. And of course no shoe shop could be passed by without us inspecting the displays like a bunch of demented squid on heat. (I was going to use octopus but I can never remember the correct plural.)

Most bizarrely, Helen did not show herself to be a keen shopper. Nor Xuan. I'm still struggling with this. I mean, a gang of teenage girls and a town full of shops. Not just shops, but shoe shops. Is that not the very definition of paradise?

While we gibbered and lurked in the racks, peering, poking and perusing to our heart's content, Helen and Xuan usually found a quiet corner, sat down, and investigated Helen's newly-acquired music sheets.

Heck only knows what they were doing that for — it's not like you can read it, is it? Then again, I could probably decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls faster than I could work out the notes of Beethoven's Sixth Concerto of Doom. And please don't fill my comments section explaining that Beethoven never wrote a Sixth Concerto of Doom. I was joking, alright? Everyone knows it was Mozart.

Thankfully for Helen and Xuan, though, we were fairly brisk in our ventures, and eventually we ran out of shopping destinations. Or maybe we were just getting low on funds (except Christie, who somehow manages to have an endless supply of cash in her pocket regardless of the school rules) and were too embarrassed to admit it. Anyway, Pip suggested we head to the beach for a ramble, which — due to the very un-English absence of grey clouds and impending rainstorms — we decided would be a fun idea.

"You do know where we're going?" Helen asked me as we headed out onto the pebbles.

"Course we do! We're professionals, remember?" I grinned at her. "We'll just walk up towards the Marina and then come back along the cliff tops. And back to the coach We know this place like the backs of our hands!"

Famous last words.

Pip and the Don bought ice creams on the way down the quay — and I will confess to stealing a bite or two where I could manage it — and all was going very merrily. We chatted about schoolwork, what we were going to do in the holidays, pets, irritating relatives and all the rest of it, and even Xuan, who is as silent as a particularly suspicious Vulcan most of the time, joined in with a good story or two.

Then we saw it. Engrossed in our girly-giggles conversations we had somehow meandered further up towards the Marina than we had on previous jaunts, which is fine except that to get to the Marina while staying on the beach means you have to pass the...

"Ah," said Pip.

"Errr," said Georgia.

"Oh. My. God." said Christie.

"The back of your hand, Abby, didn't you say?" said Helen.

I felt an overwhelming urge to stick my head under the sand like an ostrich.

Trust us not to notice that we'd inadvertently walked straight into Brighton's official nudist beach.

And trust us to walk on at the exact moment that one of said (somewhat elderly) male nudists gets up to go for a skinny-dip.

And trust us to be standing right in his path.

He didn't seem the least bit embarrassed. We, on the other hand, more than made up for it. I swear even the Don and Xuan had red faces behind their natural complexions. As for me, beetroot doesn't begin to describe it.

RETREAT!