I've booked myself some swimming lessons because of the crocodile incident and because my daughter loves swimming. She tells me it makes her feel "elegant". I don't think I've ever felt elegant in my life but I'd like to have some idea of what she's talking about.
Of course I go swimming with the children but it doesn't involve much actual swimming. I pootle about and watch them play, do a few lengths, never even get my face in the water. When they were very little, swimming mostly involved standing around getting freezing while they climbed on me and used me as a human float. And, of course, you can't go off and leave them for a proper swim when they're still in arm bands. Every child I know has proper swimming lessons now, unlike anything we had at school. I can make a passable life jacket by swinging a pair of knotted pyjama trousers over my head but that's about it.
Knowing that I'd have to get to grips with getting my face in the water, my girl made me buy a pair of goggles (more of a mask really, much more comfortable) and we went swimming on the last day of the Christmas holidays. I'l be honest with you; I hated it! I used to splash around and have fun exactly the way my children were doing. I fully expected to go under the water and feel like a ten year old again. But down I went and came up spluttering, all but shouting, "Oh my God, you know what, you can’t breathe under there!? I felt claustrophobic, bitterly disappointed with myself and jealous of my children's lack of sense of their own mortality. When did this happen to me? Why didn't I notice it happening? My friend, Kate, tells me that it's something to do with motherhood; that it makes you a scardy cat, ever alert to danger and boringly risk averse. I didn't like all the faffing about before and after swimming, the changing rooms were freezing and badly organised and, by the time we'd finished, I was grumpy as Hell. I'm not sure I should have tried it out in January feeling like a post-Christmas blimp either.
So, I'm off to my first swimming lesson, one that focuses on learning the strokes correctly and on proper breathing techniques. I'm afraid I'm going to make an idiot of myself and be unable to do what used to come entirely naturally. I'm feeling just a little bit sick at the thought.
And the Wagon Wheel (since you ask)? What I remember of swimming as a child is always having one from the vending machine afterwards. I can taste it now. Apparently they still exist but have become unaccountably smaller. Except that they haven't really, have they? Our hands are bigger and nothing is the way we remember it. I guess sometimes you have to acknowledge that there is no going back. Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and start all over again from where you are now.
