I wanted to put this on the 'most embarrassing moments' thread, but sorry dorky…I couldn't find it.
When I was earnestly 'studying' to be a dub, I went with a friend, who was also my study conductor, for a game of squash. On the way, by car I suddenly realised I had forgotten my trainers - but much worse, I got a terrible sinking feeling as I recalled where I had left them. I had left them in the only place in our shared 'batchelor' house, where they could quickly dry out: oh my God, in the oven! They had only needed a couple of minutes to dry, but muggins, here, keeps his brain in a sieve. I imagined the worst possible scenario: the house burned down. So we turned the car around and belted back to find the house in tact but thick with the blue smoke of burnt rubber but mercifully no flames. My trainers came out exceedingly 'well done'. They had shrunk to fit a pixy, and were turned up at the ends, Turkish style.
We were having such a laugh about this on the way back to the squash, how utterly stupid of me; we figured, I could never top this bit of idiocy. But 'top' that, we did.
After our game, nobody claimed the next session's play. This was a little unusual as the centre was always busy, but we didn't think anything of it, and played on for another half-hour - for free. After that, dead beat and thirsty, we went off to the changing rooms. But something wasn't right, there was nobody else around, anywhere. So we were showering in the male communal showers (no nothing gay happened), just relaxing, when a girl of about 20 years walked into our changing room - and started stripping off. Well, you can imagine the males eye-contact at this; an encyclopedia of information was exchanged in that look, or at least everything that relates to the opposite sex. When we recovered our vocal control, she was still stripping off apparently oblivious to being in the wrong room, and whispering now, we realized we had to decide whether to alert the girl to her mistake, or just wait until another male came in. Of course, it had nothing whatever to do with our enjoying the splendid view. Decision: you guessed it, we decided to let things ride for a bit, and kept quietly showering away. Sweet.
A couple of minutes later, in walks a middle-aged man. Relief! He'll see the girl, and everything will be fine. Nope, he takes a locker key, and strips himself off. Then another comes in, and then some more women, older women, nobody seems to mind about sharing the room, and they're chatting away. We decide the whole thing has gone WAY too far by now. A bit of 'harmless' voyeurism is going sour, and we figure, whatever is going on, it sure isn't for us. So while the changing room is filling up, and more are is stripping, we are casually getting dressed, hoping somehow to blend in, and then get shot of the place. (I should inform the reader at this point, that were both in tact virgins, and surprising as it may seem, were anxious for this to remain so)
Walking easily toward the apres-sport bar, there were badminton games being played by nudists, and vigorous indoor football matches, and more squash. Our whole frame of reference was dangling and wobbling, like we had been selected at random for initiation to a strange new cult. The bar-man, thank God, had his clothes on. And he told us that the whole building had been hired for the nudists. Hadn't we heard the announcement to vacate the building, he queried? Err no.
philo