Swimming ...

[Dave2002]

Curious programme on tonight - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00027cj

I couldn't swim until a fairly advanced age - and it's still not my favourite pastime, but I did manage to swim 50 lengths for BHF.
I was probably around 40 at the time.

It might be interesting to hear about other people's efforts in this area.

[Lat-Literal]

Curious programme on tonight - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00027cj

I couldn't swim until a fairly advanced age - and it's still not my favourite pastime, but I did manage to swim 50 lengths for BHF.
I was probably around 40 at the time.

It might be interesting to hear about other people's efforts in this area.

A few years before I was there, the parents had clubbed together to pay for a swimming pool at my local state junior school. That was quite unusual at the time. Many primary school children went to public pools, if at all. The downside was that every child was told they would be unable to leave at 11 for a senior school if they hadn't learnt to swim. It was nonsense but a justification for the expenditure and big pressure on those of us whose parents had never swum and who were not keen. I always hated the smell of chlorine and developed an allergy to it which is to say I swallowed huge amounts of water and that always gave me a big stomach upset. My breathing was poor too at that time given severe nasal allergies.

25 yards was the impossible minimum to achieve. I saw increasing numbers get the 25 and then some went on to the 50 and the 100. There was a very small number of us left with nothing and it seemed that we would be stuck forever more at that school. Then, towards the end of the last year I did what in the longer term, turned out to be something which was characteristic - much later, there was a similar process in "I will never be able to drive" which was obvious to all before I then got the driving licence, only to cease driving completely 14 years later - I found an ability temporarily on one day and went one better than the minimum by doing 50 yards. After this, I was a complete non swimmer again. It left people thinking that they must have imagined it but I had got my certificate. Only because I was forced into it did swimming recommence until age 16 and it was dropped at the first opportunity.

That post 11 senior school experience was much worse in all ways. I don't know how I would have handled their swimming pool expectations had I not had this earlier experience. Required life saving in pyjamas, trying to do the butterfly and taking part in water polo were always nightmares to get through without sinking. Diving was a little different. There I was totally blasé as if it would be as good a way as any of getting out and I belly flopped in great pain with regular abandon. The eureka moment was on discovering the back stroke when I could still only barely manage the front crawl. Inelegant looking and as unconventional as anything could be, it nevertheless took me through the water effectively enough. Here I could breathe. But that stroke and my innate lack of coordination meant that public swimming baths would not be a part of my future. Too many collisions on account of not seeing who was there, almost always with stroppy women who were hoping to swim the Channel. Yes, I did try. A very short phase of "before work at the Queen Mother Centre". But, no. Not to be.

I do love natural water. The look of it. The outdoorsiness of it. Being in boats. I veer towards it and found that my greater preference swimming wise was the sea. Barely swimming at all but not paddling. Sort of dabbling. Mainly alone, yet never so far from the deserted beach as to be out of sight of no one. Not waving and not drowning. There are worse places to be.

[Bryn]

I learned to swim (still breast-stroke only) at a private girls' school near Ascot. I was already in my early twenties and working in wood wasp research at a CSIRO outpost at Silwood Park. We had an arrangement with the school to use their out-door swimming pool during the summer holidays. Since my late twenties, after smashing up my right leg in a motorcycle collision with a car, I tend to swim in circles, on the rare occasions I take to the water.

[Padraig]

I learned to swim (still breast-stroke only) at a private girls' school near Ascot.

Whereas I learned to swim in the River Mourne when I was in Primary School. One day I couldn't, the next day I could.
Now I go to the local Council swimming pool, where the primary pupils line up for their lessons in the junior pool.
I go for the exercise, 3 days a week, and I do 20 lengths breast stroke each time at a comfortable rate. When I started regular swimming in the 80s I could do 50 lengths in the hour, but now it's 20 in the half hour. Quare Times.

[french frank]

With only about 80 pupils in our primary school, we were never going to get a swimming pool - and not even the nearby secondary school had one. In fact not even my independent school had one - we all went to a local public pool one afternoon a week, after our last class.

I learnt to swim in the sea while on holiday. Aged about 9, I first had 'water wings' which I cast off one day to see if I could swim without them and managed a triumphant seven strokes. Thereafter I managed more. I once swam 72 lengths and then gave up. Not very keen on swimming

[greenilex]

I learned to swim in a Carinthian lake on holiday when I was seven...lucky beast, I saw wild cyclamen in the mountains and had to ask for warm water because we were in the guesthouse annexe.
My school had an outdoor pool, and one summer we held a water carnival. I had a picture frame round my neck and swam a length trying to look Mona Lisa-ish.
I try to swim every week but usually chicken out in cold weather.

[Pulcinella]

I have negative buoyancy.
I sink.

[teamsaint]

I learned to swim in a Carinthian lake on holiday when I was seven...lucky beast, I saw wild cyclamen in the mountains and had to ask for warm water because we were in the guesthouse annexe.
My school had an outdoor pool, and one summer we held a water carnival. I had a picture frame round my neck and swam a length trying to look Mona Lisa-ish.
I try to swim every week but usually chicken out in cold weather.

A pity the Lido is long gone, Greenie. It was a summer staple for us back in the 60’s.

[teamsaint]

I have negative buoyancy.
I sink.

Well I must be a better swimmer than you, Pulcers. I sink slowly.........( I definitely have negative bouyancy in my legs, )although on my back I swim ok. Well, much less badly at any rate. Never did understand that.

[Petrushka]

An outdoor swimming pool was opened locally in 1965 and children from the schools in the area were dragooned into going down in batches once a week at various times - in all weathers! Those who could already swim were ok but many of us, me included, hated it. Needless to say, bullying was rife, and that was just from the teachers, so anyone who found it all a bit traumatic was mercilessly picked on. Most of us lived in fear, a fairly common state of affairs in those days if you were at school.

In my case, I wasn't allowed to wear my spectacles in the pool, so my short-sightedness only served to heighten the bullying and the trauma. I never have learnt to swim and have had a dread of being in deep water such as to make me wonder if I drowned in a previous life. Swimming? Not for me, thanks.

[ardcarp]

Given the above, I feel embarrassed to say that Ardcarps are all aquatic. Family Boxing Day swim at nearby beach...ages from four to, well, mine. It is a great activity, and nothing quite like it for lifting the mood.

My personal dread is of being confined in an underground narrow tunnel. How anyone can even think about pot-holing I really can't imagine. It is my idea of purgatory.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well I must be a better swimmer than you, Pulcers. I sink slowly.........( I definitely have negative bouyancy in my legs, )although on my back I swim ok. Well, much less badly at any rate. Never did understand that.

I developed a terrible phobia about water after my mother decided to dip me below the surface without prior mentioning holding my breath in an open air swimming pool at about the age of 3 - one of the few early experiences I can remember vividly. Weekly swimming lessons started at school, visits to a pool located in the basement of a posh block of flats behind Derry & Toms. How well I remember the piano music always played before morning assembly on the day! I would just lurk on the edge of the shallow end succeeding in remaining invisible. Then at about age six Fulham Baths came to the rescue. Someone must've mentioned to Mum that they did swimming lessons there. On entering the imposing Edwardian entrance to the building the cafeteria was pointed out, the hot orange squash on offer a big incentive for afterwards. The water was minimally heated; preliminary lessons consisted of being drawn across the shallow end by an overhead pulley, arms through rubber hoops keeping one afloat. The next stage, being hauled in from the side by rope while grabbing an inflated rubber wheel in front, proved that stage one had been successful: one was self-floating without knowing it. And then came the width, and then two - always breast stroke. Dad always claimed he'd learned first to float on his back, and then the back stroke. The sheer idea of the water being able to hold me up if I just leant back and let my feet come to the surface was as beyond contemplation as the thought of diving head first into potential oblivion; yet it was in that way that I did eventually gain the necessary confidence, and it came courtesy an exchange holiday, staying in the south of France en famille. The house bordered a highly saline lake, which stank, had some kind of prickly plants on clumps on its floor to be avoided at all costs, which caused painful swollen rashes, and was undoubtedly polluted; but floating was as easy and pleasurable as lying on a foam mattress, and from there one could put hands on hips and propel backwards either by frog movements with my legs or just padding and swinging my arms round my head, eg backstroke. On returning home this proved to work in the much less salty North Sea, but, although one of the things that motivated me to move here was seeing a wonderful "silent documentary" on the Brixton Lido - I thought, if people living around that district are like that I'll be at home there - I have so far not managed to pluck up the courage to go along. I never did learn the Crawl, which seemed an invitation to swallow some of the water one was stirring up by the violent movements of the arms and head, nor the Butterfly. And so, my last experience of swimming having been some fifty years ago, I'm left thinking that swimming is not something one ever forgets how to do - just like riding a bike.

[Dave2002]

And so, my last experience of swimming having been some fifty years ago, I'm left thinking that swimming is not something one ever forgets how to do - just like riding a bike.

So why not put your theory to the test?

I’m not sure I can ride a bike any more.

[Serial_Apologist]

So why not put your theory to the test?

I’m not sure I can ride a bike any more.

I learned in my cousin's back garden aged ten, riding round and round their large lawn. Nineteen years later I bought my first second hand bike, and found I could ride imediately. It seems once the sense of balance is mastered it doesn't get lost - although having said that, my sense of balance today at age 73 is not quite what it was, and I always fear lurching as I try to get my leg over, if you get my meaning...

[greenilex]

Southampton Lido was a great place to be, and we fought hard for years for a replacement, which has still not materialised. There is a rough greenish overspill carpark on the site at present, which gets busy during the horrid Boat Show (sorry, great commercial asset and source of well- paid employment and so forth...)