Christmas Letter 2002
Swimming
Swimming is awful. You have to:
- spend a fortune on pool membership
- write off three half-days a week
- get dressed and undressed all the time despite the fact that:
- it's either absolutely freezing or stupefyingly hot and sweaty in the change room
- you can never get dry enough to get dressed quickly (the trials of putting socks onto damp feet! don't even think about pantyhose!)
- sometimes, if you set off soon enough after waking up, you can save some dressing/undressing by wearing your swimmers under your clothes, but that will often mean that you forget to take any underwear
- other people will ignore the vast expanses of empty hooks in the change room and put their stuff right next to yours, so that you have no space to get dressed/undressed in
And you have to:
- immerse yourself in chlorinated water and sneeze a lot and have a croaky voice
- spend a fortune replacing swimming costumes because chlorine makes them transparent and stretchy in about five minutes
- shower continually (so that your skin falls off, and your hair seems more than ever like something that should be used to stuff sofas) despite the fact that:
- public showers alternate unpredictably between scalding and freezing
- there's never sufficient space to put your toiletries ['taw-l&-trEs] so you will be accompanied throughout your ablutions by a cascade of tiny objects which you will have to risk your back retrieving
- other people always leap into the shower next to yours and make the water go cold (at pools where the shower walls have gaps under them, people will leap into the shower next to yours just after you've got dry, so your feet and legs get all wet again)
And in my pool, at the C*nberra Cl*b, chosen because it's the only place in the Australian Capital Territory where you get your own lane and don't have to be smashed into and nearly drowned by other swimmers who throw their arm or can't tell left from right:
- the water is always too cold - the Cl*b aims for (but doesn't always achieve) 26 degrees. That's a whole 1.2 degrees colder than the lowest temperature tolerated by the Elite Squad at the Australian Institute of Sport, so their coach told me. "Whew, 26 - that's pretty cold for this town," he reckoned. But no one listens, because:
- the gang of curmudgeons who occupy the sauna want a cold plunge pool so they can leap in (ignoring the signs about showering) and wash the sweat off. Ew!
- whenever the water is colder than 25, I have to go to Civic Pool instead - and pay again, and risk
- being hit, and
- encountering (bombing, abusive, screaming) kids
Not that I get away without being bombed at the C*nberra Cl*b. Sometimes it's deliberate (the sauna curmudgeons know I keep asking for an increase in pool temperature) and sometimes it's just autism. Lots of chaps think it's perfectly OK to leap into the pool when someone is practically under their feet. The great crash and the tidal wave frightens me out of my wits; I flinch and risk putting my back into spasm; all in all, I nearly drown. If I say anything, they start shouting and want to argue precise distances.
I hate swimming!
Christmas Letter 2002 |
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Page created 21 December 2002; last updated 24 December 2002