3 October 2010
Conversation in changing room. YOUTH ONE: ‘All right, Rob? What you here for today, mate? Kick-boxing?’ YOUTH TWO: ‘Nah, most times I just come here to ’ave a wash these days, to be honest.’
20 October 2010
Dear man standing in the shower cubicle next to me when my bottle of conditioner exploded: I’m sorry if you thought the white rain falling on your head was semen.
17 December 2010
I love the way that when I’m swimming at the pool in low sunlight the rays will softly illuminate the ripples and the used plaster that floats by on them.
3 January 2011
Awkward conversation witnessed in the steam room today between two men in their fifties, largely revolving around one of them’s desire to have rough, uninhibited sex with his son’s new girlfriend. ‘I can’t help it,’ he said as his friend shifted uncomfortably on the slimy porcelain ledge beside him. ‘Every time I see her I can’t stop thinking about taking her from behind.’
17 March 2011
The pool seem to be having a crackdown on the condition of ‘dirt leg’ among their regulars. At least, I can only assume that that’s why a cleaner sprayed my shins powerfully with his hose through the gap under the door as I was having a shower this afternoon. Still, it is reassuring to know that the facilities are being kept clean, especially with the realisation that there are many out there who view shower-based urination as exercise salad’s essential accompanying vinaigrette.
I enjoyed swimming in the sea in Norfolk and Suffolk, but my excursions to rivers, largely the slow-flowing Waveney not far from my house, were poorly planned and characterised by a half-commitment to the task in hand. I climbed apprehensively into the water from small vertical banks thick with bulrushes, breaststroked fifty or so yards upstream with the air of someone who’d broken illegally into a private complex, came face to face with an obstacle or something I’d convinced myself was an obstacle – Did that Egyptian goose look a bit handy? – then breaststroked back and got out, silty-toed and unsure of my role in society. But in 2014, when I moved to Devon, I found that its rivers were much more inviting: clearer and faster-flowing, their rocky banks dotted with enticing launching points. The sea down here is warmer too – not on the whole warm warm, but between May and October it generally doesn’t make you shriek or pull a face like you’re sucking a lemon when you get in, which was previously the norm for me.
I posted a few photos on Twitter and Instagram of the swimming challenges I set myself in Devon last summer, which probably look far more spectacular and brave than they were. What I forgot when I did this was that my dad, who is always on a determined search for the cloud in every silver lining, stalks my social network accounts with the zeal of a private detective. Pretty soon the emails started to roll in: three, sometimes four, every day. ‘TWO DIE IN RIP TIDE OFF THE COAST OF NORFOLK,’ announced the subject heading of one. ‘SEARCH FOR CURLY-HAIRED MAN, 41, FEARED DROWNED, CONTINUES,’ said another. After about fourteen links to modern news stories, tales of a more retrospective kind of maritime horror began to appear. One dated from as far back as June 1956.
With hindsight I admit that the first swimming challenge I set myself was quite bold. I hadn’t even thought of setting myself swimming challenges before that. I was splashing about in my favourite cove in a dreamy way, and as I was I got to thinking about the cove around the corner, which I had visited on holiday when I was little, and I thought it would be quite fun to swim around the corner to revisit it, so I set about doing just that. Swimming to this cove from my favourite cove didn’t seem a huge deal, as when you start you are close to the shore and the water is clear beneath you, but as I rounded the corner everything was very different: I was fairly far out in open water, the waves were bigger and stronger, and I got a small but genuine sense of what an unsympathetic bastard the sea could be. The swim was around a mile in total, and I was tired when I returned to the beach of the original cove, so much so that I staggered a bit like someone who’d escaped from a shipwreck. I also couldn’t see from getting so much saltwater in my eyes, which probably made it look like I was crying, perhaps owing to having lost a loved one in the same shipwreck. When I fully regained my sight I noticed both of my kneecaps were streaming blood and that a devastatingly beautiful woman had appeared on the beach not far from my towel and bag, as devastatingly beautiful people have an annoying habit of doing when you are looking your least dignified. On the plus side, I knew that my hair would feel great in an hour or so in that excellent crunchy way it does when you’ve been in the sea.
‘YOUR KNEES WERE BLEEDING BECAUSE YOU SMASHED THEM AGAINST SOME ROCKS,’ my dad told me later that week on the phone. ‘I ASKED MALCOLM AND HE TOLD ME. I SHOWED HIM YOUR PICTURE TOO AND HE SAYS YOU’RE AN IDIOT. HIS BROTHERS HAVE SWUM THE CHANNEL AND HE’S REALLY STRONG AND GOOD AT SWIMMING. HE’S SEVENTY NOW BUT HE CAN STILL PICK ME UP AND TURN ME UPSIDE DOWN IN THE WATER AT THE LOCAL POOL. DON’T DO SWIMS LIKE THAT ON
