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The young and the bikini-less

I was about 25 the first time I went on a proper beach holiday. It was for “work”. Me and my friend Sacha, the “photographer” (well, now she’s a photographer — back then it was in inverted commas), were “investigating” the ker-azy world of the 18-30 holiday. Who knows whose brain I was using at the time, but I thought we would be the queens of the beach. I thought the place would be dripping with testosterone, and getting laid would be as easy as walking into Pentonville prison with a handful of pardons.

At this stage, of course, I knew nothing about the unbearable perfection of your average band of 19-year-olds on an Ayia Napa beach. They are all teeny. I don’t know where the ones with cellulite are, have they all gone to Cornwall? The application of some simple arithmetic sheds some light; they’ve spent all their money for the year on fake-tanning every square inch of themselves, from the tops of their heads to the gaps between their tippy toes. They haven’t eaten since the woolly jumper season.

I want to make a snide remark, but the truth is, they could not look any lovelier. Never mind that their male counterpart — indeed the very people that this beauty is aimed at and who they’ll end up getting off with later in the day — are scorched red like open sores and shouting about football matches of 12 years ago.

You still do not want to be sitting next to these younglings at bikini o’clock, even if you yourself are 25 and still, technically, young. Here is an option: go to a nudist beach. I discovered this in Spain, with my friend Julia. She read in a guide book that a certain beach, with its tapioca sand and startling blue sea, was one of the world’s most beautiful. What it did not add was that the people on the beach did not wear clothes. You do not find such a place awash with high–street hotties — I guess, because if you’re going to spend £25 on H&M swimwear without necessarily swimming, you at least want to be wearing it.

Beaches like this are full of German couples of a certain age. Neither rich nor poor, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither noisy nor quiet, they are simply nude. They love the “nudery”. They positive-visualise the feel of sand on their wurzits. I had nothing against this experience but I have noticed that, ever since, I have tended to buy my trips away from the exhibitionists, rather than just choose somewhere very eccentric and hope for the best.

The beaches of fancy Europe — St Tropez, the Algarve, Puglia — are a Scrooge-esque cautionary tale for the size-zero hyper-tanner. They are still skinny and they’re still brown but now, 30 years on, they all look like handbags. No amount of money spent on a handbag will offset this. But hese are just the sour grapes of a pasty person in May. I should love to look like any kind of high-quality accessory.