Wetlook World Forum

On the first day, Sunday, I went to Margate.   It was just an ordinary July day, cloud and only occasional sun and just over 20C.    Being a weekend the beach was nevertheless moderately busy, and I took 5 photos: M91 - M95 in my Flickr collection.   Shortly before 5 0'clock I noticed two policemen on the beach talking to the lifeguards and a couple of civilians.   Then they approached me; here we go again....    "There has been an allegation that you have been taking pictures of children, so we need to ask you to let us look through your phone".     As you can see, there were virtually no children in any of the pictures; though I had deleted them from my phone I had not yet deleted them from the 'deleted items' so they found them (plus of course the 'tourist' pics I always take for cover), took a very quick look, shrugged their shoulders, and gave the phone back to me saying "people were saying that you were pointing your phone at children all over the beach; please be careful where you point it in future"; then a bit of chit-chat about where I was going for my evening meal.    They didn't even check my name on the police national computer and sex offenders register, as the cop 5 years ago did.

I know where I first went wrong; I saw a group of desi women, including one in jeans, starting to take shoes off, put bags down, and generally prepare for going into the water, though they looked like they would be a few minutes yet; so I moved gently to the waters-edge on the correct side for the sun, and was just taking my phone out in a leisurely fashion when I realised the one in jeans was already going in, and fast!    The sensible thing to do would have been to shrug my shoulders and hope for better luck when she came out, but false instinct took over and I rushed into the water and very obviously took a photo, M94 being the result.    I knew at the time that some chavvy-looking people standing nearby had noticed, and am pretty sure they were the same people whom I saw speaking to the cops and lifeguards.    

But what was all this about "pointing at children all over the beach"?    Well, my guess is that my practice of doing internet searches and looking at emails and so on, to disguise when I was taking pictures, had backfired; once the story started going round the beach that I was taking pictures, people assumed that whenever I took my phone out I was taking more pictures, and sometimes, I guess, the phone looked like - or they convinced themselves it looked like - it was pointing at children.    So maybe that bit of subterfuge is not such a good idea!

However, I was not in trouble, so spent 4 more days at different beaches, getting a few more photos each day without any problems.    Until the Friday, which I spent mostly sightseeing but spent a couple of hours at Folkestone beach in the afternoon.    It was still hot so I spent a lot of the time wading in the shallows, vaguely hoping for a chance to photograph the intermittent wetlook, though the only pic I had taken was of a mature woman in jeans whom I had had a joke with about getting our clothes wet, and who knew I was taking it.   Then some chavvy guy poked me in the shoulder and accused me of taking videos - not merely photographs this time - of children.    At any other time in the last 2 years, I would have been able triumphantly to show him the phone and demand an apology when he found only 'tourist' pics, the wetlook pics having already been uploaded and deleted.    But Flickr, damn them, had stopped accepting my uploads from the phone the day before (see separate post), so all the previous day's photos were still on the phone.    I knew that there were a few kids visible on some of them - nothing a policeman would consider inappropriate, but a chav wanting to prove he was right could be guaranteed to take umbrage at them, so I deemed it best to agree to his demand that I "leave".    The second piece of bad luck was that I had blistered my foot wearing wet shoes the day before (wet clothes are great, but wet shoes I hate) so could only limp slowly away, whilst thinking how irrational it was that, if they thought I had been taking improper videos, they were letting me walk away with the vids still in my phone - surely this would dawn on them and they would come after me.    So I quickly deleted all the pics.    A shame, because two of them were undoubtedly the best of the week.    And of course nobody came after me......

So a bit depressing all round, though I did get 48 new wetlook pics, and enjoyed a lot of good wetlook on the days I was not being hassled by chavs.    I am growing to hate these self-appointed paedo-hunters; they haven't a fucking clue what they're doing; its just an excuse to bully random people.    Cunts.