Saturday 9 June 2012

Pearl Diving


"OK - ANYONE HERE WHO CANNOT SWIM?"  The thick-legged student from Guy's Hospital shouts to the shivering boys at the middle-edge of Woking Lido.

I, and a handful of other freaks put our hands up.  We seem to amount to a group of around 4.

There is the very fat boy, then there is the very thin boy, then there is they boy covered in spots and with extremely thick glasses - my best friend - and me, a boy of over six feet in height, but only weighing in at around 9 stone, with his shoulder-blades sticking painfully out from behind his back.

"OK.  ALL YOU BOYS GO OVER TO THE SHALLOW END, AND I WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY".

Shortly looked around him, then realised he was not being directly singled out for humiliation, so relaxed a little.

We shamble over to the 2 foot deep water and step in, splashing around and feeling very vulnerable indeed.  Our willies shrink even further with the cold and wet.  We try to laugh, but - as with those who are about to die - fail to salute ourselves, and wait for the inevitable.

After too brief a period, the Guy's student comes over and starts barking orders, and us freaks respond by thrashing around in the shallows, creating a large amount of chlorinated, frothy scum on the piss-saturated water.

"NO NO NO NO!", the muscular student shouts from the concrete edge,  "OH FOR GOD'S SAKE!  JUST SWIM, DAMN YOU!"

Then, after three minutes, he gives up on us and goes over to make the good swimmers swim better - there are medals to be won, and he wants to win them.

I still cannot swim, 50 years later.

10 comments:

  1. Who would you be if you could swim? There you are, then.

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  2. Here I am then, drowning. (Actually, thanks, Joanne)

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  3. I was sent to a swimming course when I was a child, and it was awful. I could already swim, so I don't know what I was doing there. But the instructor was a typical German grumpy man who felt bigger by shouting at you. When he 'suggested' to jump off the diving board I got the hell out of there!

    Picture a wet little kid running for the exit while trying not to slip on the tiles of the pool surround.

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    1. Ok, I just pictured you, and I send sympathy!

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  4. Thrown in...swam.

    Anyone who can build 'Woking' into their first para' deserves a Mars bar.

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    1. The last time H.I. tried to teach me (Cuba) a shark came up to see what was going on, and I haven't been back in the water since. I hear Woking is doing very well in the world of football...

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  5. that photo is one of my all time favs!
    love it!

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I should have given him a credit, but I've forgotten his name now. Garcia something. Good isn't it?

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    2. At first I thought it was a Michael Andrews painting.

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  6. I love the water but am not a great swimmer. I can dog paddle like nobody's business, do a passable crawl, and flail when i try to do the butterfly. I find swimming underwater to be a lot faster if i need to get from point a to point b.

    Why is it that those who need the most help are so often passed over for the ones who seem naturally gifted?

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