THIS week I braved the packed car park at the local leisure centre to take the children to the pool. It’s great to see their proper swimming after all those years of bobbing jelly babies in floating contraptions or sitting poolside as they Zogg back and forth under proper instruction.
Mind you, it’s not just children who benefit from swimming lessons. While the weather is cold, rivers are obscured by a sheet of ice and overhanging frosts, and I have turned away from wild water to immerse myself regularly in tepid communal chlorine solution.
For years I breast-stroked through life worrying that if I dredged up my thrashing-windmill front crawl, I would suffer the indignity of being rescued immediately by a whistle-blowing teenager.
However, finally inspired by the silky seal-like progress of The Daughter, a year ago I joined a class to sort me out technically.
Now, I’d been sucked into pool-based classes occasionally before, to wallow among a shoal of flower-headed floating chintz doing aqua-aerobics. This sounds dangerously bacterial and whilst deceptively carnival with their water-based zumba, regular tidal waves were indeed imperiling the swimmers in the fast lane.
But off to lessons I bravely went, and at this point I’d like to name and fame my instructor Marie who did a right Royal job, whipped me a few sets of 100 metres and fast-tracked me onto Abingdon’s Friday Swim Train programme.
This sounded to my novice ears misleadingly akin to an aquatic version of the Orient Express, but I soon found out it’s neither luxurious or relaxing: it’s designed to improve fitness radically and which, if I am brave enough to stick with it, will increase my strength exponentially.
Within six weeks I’ll be able to match the strongest man in the world and pull aeroplanes along by my teeth. Underwater.
As I doggy-paddle fraudulently, desperate to keep up, my rare tumble turns distinctly more tumble than turn, I remind myself that other people swim the Channel armed with nothing but a bar of lard and an anti-jellyfish prayer: with enough dedication, one can do anything.
Besides, nothing is as tricky as three tired wet under-fours. In fact, that’s probably what motivates Channel-crossers to leave English shores.
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