SWIMMING

I went for a swim first thing this morning because my daughter has been giving me a hard time about not doing any exercise since I started working. I haven’t had a swim since circa 1975 so was quite excited once I’d got myself over the negative barriers I’ve been battling with for the last few years – snot and plasters in the water, water in your ears, smelling of chlorine for the rest of the week, hating getting cold and wet, hating drying hair with a pathetic dryer that barely works, hating the thought of verruca’s and other fungal growths, bashing into people, thinking in advance about hair removal OR hoping that you don’t see anyone you know or fancy, drowning and even worse than drowning – having goggle eyes for the next two days and so the list goes on….

Having managed to talk myself over all those hurdles it was actually better than I thought. Almost pleasurable. I’ve forgotten the etiquette of swimming pools – the looks you get if you’re in the wrong lane or too slow and the effort required to get in. The tiny space to get changed in and the effort not to look at any body else’s body. I remembered everything – shampoo, make-up, clothing…even a pound coin for the lockers….everything except my underpants, which was most unfortunate because I had to put on my jeans with a towel around my waist and sort of pretend to put on pants because you look like a weirdo not wearing pants to the swimming pool. But then, because my legs were still not properly dry I had to really wriggle my way into my jeans and in the process not only did my towel fall off but I keeled over onto the bench. Really not a good look at all and of course I looked way more of a weirdo, having pretended to put on pants and then clearly not having pants on.

Does anyone know of a pair of goggles for old people that doesn’t make a dent in your eyeball sockets that lasts less than 24 hours? I can’t possibly go swimming again if I’m going to age ten years every time I go and I’m not sure those big ones are much better because for a start you look like a prat and secondly they just dent a different part of your face. What about inventing a whole face goggle that sticks on to your hair line, with a teeny oxygen tank attached so that you don’t have to turn your head and get water in your ears whilst doing crawl? Bit like a space helmet? In fact the whole space suit would work well – would mean I wouldn’t have to worry about removing body hair in advance.

Watch this space (suit) – it could be at a swimming pool near you very soon.