Tadpoles are Good at That.

I was floating serenely on my back. It seems all those extra layers of fat magically counteract the effect of gravity in the deep end of the pool. I can fold my arms behind my head and drift away. With my eyes closed I can imagine floating in a warm tropical sea with the water gently lapping at my side. All is peace and tranquillity until I am splashed in the face. It’s not the life guard who is trying to ‘revive’ me, though he is hovering close by, instead it’s ‘Mr Cheerful’.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he says with a comment that has earned him his nickname. ‘You looked like a dead tadpole,’ he continues eyeing me critically.
‘Thanks,’ I say spinning around and looking for open water, but there’s no escape I’m hemmed in.
‘I’m surprised they let you in,’ he says his false teeth wobbling dangerously loose. ‘This is the swim for the over-sixties you know.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘but it’s listed as being for the over fifties.’
I wait for the compliment. Something along the lines of, ‘You can’t be over fifty,’ would be a good start.’ I tread water patiently.
‘Mr Cheerful’ is spitting water. ‘Well,’ he finally says with surprise. ‘I guess they just let anyone in these days.’
‘I guess so,’ I say.
I’m bobbing in the deep end with gentle kicks to keep afloat. ‘Mr Cheerful’ is attempting to bob alongside me but is rapidly sinking, he is forced to make a grab for the rail and I have at last a chance to swim away.
I realise I’m out of his range if I swim in the middle of the pool. Here I am safe.
I am changed and feeding my wristband into the machine waiting for it to cough up my pound coin when he suddenly reappears at my side. He’s been lurking waiting for me. I realise I’m being stalked by a pond-life predator. I manage to slip away and wriggle free: tadpoles are good at that!

How to be the World’s Worse Mum: Step 1 The Trousers.

In the maelstrom of a Monday morning there is a simple call,
‘Where’s my school trousers?’
It’s a heart stopping moment.
I check the ironing pile.
Nothing.
I check the drying rack, nothing.
I open the washing machine door and peer inside. There’s a fusty smell from the damp clothes that haven’t yet been unloaded and have been sitting there since Friday night.
‘Do we have any?’
I reach inside the near festering heap of wet clothes and find them.
‘’Won’t be long,’ I call.
The ironing board is clanged open. I put the kitchen heater on, and set the iron to its highest setting.
The radio is counting down the minutes we have left before we have to dash across town. My hair is wet, wild and uncombed and it’s dripping down my back as I stand on the icy kitchen tiles.
‘Where are they?’ The voice has come closer. ‘Oh!’ The teenager is standing at the threshold of the kitchen as steam puthers from one of the wet trouser legs in an ominous mushroom cloud.
‘It won’t take long,’ I trill.
Only teenagers can deliver ‘The Look’. It’s a searing stare, a glance that reduces you to your lowest common denominator. It’s a look that can fraction your soul into a million pieces of guilt; I meet his eyes expecting it, but I don’t get ‘The Look’, instead I get something even worse.
‘Oh, that’s okay,’ the teenager says calmly, ‘I’ll just go and pack my bag and make my breakfast. Don’t worry about it.’ He walks calmly away.
Steam is filling the kitchen in some sort of primitive thermo-nuclear reaction as I attempt to iron the trousers dry.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll wear them anyway, I don’t mind them being wet,’ he calls. There isn’t a trace of sarcasm in what he says. He means it.
I breathe in the steam and frantically try to iron dry the pockets and the waist band.
‘It’s not a problem.’ he says as he comes to watch, ‘I’ll be cool wearing them. The school is really hot.’
I have visions of him walking through the school leaving a trail of dripping water along the corridors; or of him leaving suspicious damp stains on every chair he sits upon; or even of him disappearing in a cloud of water vapour as he gently steams by a radiator. My heart fractures into a trillion pieces of guilt as I visualise each scenario.
I swipe the iron over the trousers and bow my head like a penitent sinner.
The trousers are so dry by the time I’ve finished that their material has practically metamorphosed into a new chemical element.
The teenager calmly takes them, dresses, and then waits patiently by the front door; as I rush upstairs to comb my hair and then rush downstairs to find my bags.
He opens the door and walks serenely outside looking immaculate; whilst I tumble out of the house behind him Neanderthal style and trail after him to the car.

Gotta Catcha train!

I was in a hurry.
I had the camera so I could take pictures, I had maps detailing where the Chinese Embassy was in London together with the route I should walk from Euston to join the demonstration in Portland Place. All I needed was some cash, and a snack to keep me going on the first demonstration I was going to in years.
The car wouldn’t start.
I turned off the ignition and tried again, hoping that the strange dry choking sound wouldn’t be repeated.
It spluttered into life, and I was off. I’d jumped the first hurdle.
‘First stop the supermarket to get some money and food,’ I thought realising at the same time that I didn’t have my watch. I glanced at the clock in the car. The car clock tends to keep its own time, trailing grudgingly and unpredictably behind Greenwich Mean Time. I had no idea what the actual time was. Nor for that matter did I have any idea as to what time the train was due to leave for London.
I had wanted to find out the train times and had sat at the computer patiently waiting for it to load earlier that morning. When it did finally finish loading there was a red virus alert warning on the screen.
Apparently, a Trojan horse had somehow plodded in and was now waiting impatiently deep inside my computer system ready to disgorge its poisonous entrails. Somewhere in the virtual universe some low-life hacker had managed to send his corrupt Neddy-beast in my direction.
My anti-virus software told me that they’d rounded up the old nag and had corralled it in a quiet corner of the computer and all I had to do was to follow the instructions on the screen in order to send it to the knackers’ yard.
An hour later, after following the instructions: installing all the updates, shutting down the computer and restarting the computer, the screen message demanded that I should shut down and restart for a fourth time. There was now no time left now to search the web for the train times; but there was still time to find the details about the demonstration. I printed them off stuffed them into my bag and set off, I could read them on the train.

In the supermarket the two ‘Basket Only’ checkouts were free, and the packed sandwiches were close by. I quickly picked up two packets and turned to the checkouts.
Both were now busy.
The man I was now queuing behind seemed to have stuffed a month’s shopping into his basket. The cashier was struggling to lift and find the bar code for the huge sack of dried dog food, large enough to feed Cerberus for a year, which filled the entire conveyer belt. It finally took the two of them to raise the packet over the scanner and for the satisfying bleep to be heard.
The man dawdled over the packing of the rest of his shopping, before slowly searching for his wallet to pay. His slow motion movements were oblivious to my ‘one step, two step’ imaginary dance to the mantra, ‘Gotta catcha train, Gotta catcha train.’
He was in no hurry to return to his Hell hound.
Finally though, he shuffled away and the cashier stroked my three items slowly over the scanner. I asked for ‘Cashback’ and with rapid dancing fingers pressed in my pin number into the pad.
‘Oh,’ said the cashier as she opened the till. ‘I don’t have enough notes.’ She switched on the blinking light that strikes dread in all shoppers and smiled at me. ‘Won’t be long,’ she cooed.
She lied.

Just where had I parked the car?
It had been easy to spot the car last week due to the Tibetan flag that had been flying from its aerial, but I’d already put the flag in my bag ready for the demo to save time. Now the car with its indistinctive red colour matched every other car in the car park.
‘The next time I buy a car it will be pink,’ I thought when I finally found it nestled between two similar coloured cars.

Of course all the traffic lights were on red.
A lovely old lady, bent double, and using her stick for support, slowly and painfully crossed at a pedestrian crossing while I patiently waited. The traffic lights flashed orange and then green as I waited for her. There was still plenty of time to catch the train. I mused as she reached the middle of the road.

The train station was at last ahead, and it was with relief that I pulled into the car park.

I’d made it!

This was the moment when I remembered that I had no change for the pay and display machine, all my mini-stash of coins having been previously raided by a sweet hungry teenager.
Unruffled I headed towards the cabin where four months ago they’d been someone who could exchange notes for coins.
The cabin door was closed and locked.
I approached a man who was busily feeding one of the machines. He didn’t have any change and possessively guarded the coins in his hand from my covetous eyes.
Another soul kindly exchanged my £5 note for coins. I triumphantly returned to the nearby ticket machine.
I whipped in the coins and waited for the ticket.
Nothing.
I pressed the green button again. I had paid in £5. The machine agreed that I’d paid £5. I checked for coins that had been returned and again pressed the green button.
Nothing.
I pressed the button again.
Nothing.
I peered into every orifice that the machine had.
Nothing.
Despairing I ran to the train station and spoke to the ticket inspector.
‘Just put a note on your car explaining what has happened,’ he said calmly.
‘But I don’t want my car to get clamped, or to get a fine,’ I wailed anxiously.
‘You can always appeal when you do,’ the ticket inspector replied patiently. ‘Just write the number of the ticket machine on your note, and the time you paid and place it in your car window. The machine might have run out of paper.’
He smiled genially at some calm passengers who showed him their tickets before moving onto the platform to wait for the London train. There were other relaxed souls unhurriedly purchasing their train tickets at the counters behind them.
I could feel beads of sweat on my brow. I raced back to the car park. It was a place where couples were struggling to find the right change for the machine. Husbands whose wives were carrying handbags seemed to be faring best in the search for elusive coins.
A family approached my machine. ‘I’d use another one,’ I warned. I’ve just put £5 in this one and it didn’t print a ticket.’
They nodded and went away to a different machine while I scurried over to my car to find a pen and paper then back to the wretched machine to get its number and the correct time of day.
By the time I got back to it, there was a man already putting coins into my machine. Before I could warn him he’d slipped in the last coin and pressed the green button. The machine whirred instantly into life printing out his ticket.
It was then I noticed the sign above the machine. The price wasn’t £5; it had been changed to £5.50!
The machine was registering that it was waiting for the full amount to be paid into it again; my £5 had been lost.
I would have to find change for a ten pound note before I could get a ticket.
In the distance the London train was pulling into the station. Defeated I returned to my car, put away the paper and pen, and drove slowly home.
The demo would be one short.
I wondered how many others try to get to demos and are thwarted by one thing or another.

As my car was momentarily halted by busy traffic outside an empty Chinese takeaway I seized the moment, grabbed my Tibetan flag and shouted, ‘Free Tibet. Free Tibet.’
It was not quite the Chinese Embassy, Trafalgar Square or Downing Street but it would have to do.
I had been on a demo!

Shall I compare thee...

The water was warm but already crowded by the time I got in. As I struck out for my first diagonal swim of the pool I was ‘cheered’ by the customary snatches of conversation I accidentally overheard.
‘Well, I went to see the doctor and he said…’
I quickly swam in the other direction. I didn’t want to hear what the doctor had said; though my new direction was also not a good choice.
‘Bert’s now fitted with a pacemaker,’ a white haired man was saying to his bald companion.
‘Is he now,’ his friend replied, as if they were describing the latest must have gadget.
I spun around and veered off into open water.
Some recognised me from the previous week and gave me a warm smile with their friendly, ‘Good mornings’ as they slowly and sedately swam perfect lengths.
‘Hello again!’
I had ebbed too close to 'Mr Cheerful' who I’d met the previous week.
‘Hello,’ I replied.
I was trapped by a convoy of slow-moving swimmers, there was no escape. I smiled.
‘Are you a cat woman?’ Mr Cheerful asked.
Bewildered I stared at him trying to make sense of his remark. Was he comparing me to some sort of super hero? A slinky thin feminine defender of justice, is that’s what Cat-Woman does? Or was he perhaps referring to my figure, which would be a surprise as my shape is more camel-like than cat-like.
My puzzled silence did not deter him. He no doubt assumed my confused look was due to deafness or senility, or a combination of both. He raised his voice, and this time enunciated the words very slowly and loudly.
‘Are … you … a … cat … woman?’
‘Oh,’ I said finally realising what he meant. ‘I like both cats and dogs, though I haven’t got either. I’m probably more hamster woman. What about you?’
‘I prefer cats.’ he said, ‘though mine have all died. Hamsters are nice.’
I nodded.
Open water called. I smiled and struck out again, swimming circles, diagonals, squares, trapeziums and the occasional rhombus, anything but lengths; as I treaded water Mr Cheerful suddenly appeared again by my side.
‘You’re like a…’ he was gasping for breath.
I had a moment to wonder what I could be compared to. Shakespeare spoke of a summer’s day and roses. Poets compare women to stars, the sun, flowers and rainbows. I waited for the final word as he coughed up a mouthful of water.

‘Tadpole!’ he finally spluttered.

‘Oh,’ I said.

I thought of: black tadpoles with their long tails and bulging heads; pond slime and slipperiness; cold wriggling bodies and tiny gaping mouths. Perhaps as compliments go this was not one of the best I’d ever been given.
‘Why?’ I asked perplexed.
‘Because I was watching you last week and you are just like a little tadpole flitting around the pool the way you do.’
‘Ah,’ I said swimming away as fast as my little tadpole legs could take me.
I borrowed a float from the life-guard and worked on my frog-like kicks.
‘You don’t need a float,’ someone sneered. ‘Use your arms like us.’
Heads nodded in agreement in the convoy behind him. My float was getting disapproving looks. I drifted into the shallow end and paused a while.
‘That’s what my friend used to do,’ another man said seeing me with the float. ‘He just worked on his legs. He was training for the Olympics. He could out-swim any of us.’
I passed the float onto his wife who was keen to try it for herself, and struck out again in my inimitable tadpole style for open water.
Who knows, perhaps I’ll be an Olympian before I croak.

Raising the Tibetan Flag

The language he was using seemed nothing more than a murmur. There were no hissing sibilant sounds, more the sound of a river babbling in a brook repeatedly. His voice was low as if it belonged not to the element of the air but to the element of the earth. His name was the Venerable Sangye and he was speaking at length, while his patient interpreter nodded and waited for him to finish his long stream of thought.

When the interpreter spoke it was a shock to hear the meaning of the monk’s words. The lulling voice of the saffron robed monk who had seemed to be speaking of poetry and music was instead speaking of persecution. The soft drone of his voice had not been telling of snow capped mountains and sweet scented valleys but of poor peasant farmers in Tibet who are being forced to leave their land. His gentle soft cadences were speaking not of love but of the slow strangulating death of oppression.

He spoke of the Tibetan peasants whose harvest is overtaxed forcing them to move to urban areas. He told how once they were there they were rounded up and placed in detention centres before being removed back into the country. It seems that the Chinese find begging Tibetan peasants to be something of an eyesore in their modern cities. To work you have to be able to speak Chinese the native language marks you out as a second class citizen.

His gentle rippling voice which should have been reciting prayers and meditations was instead speaking of betrayed Tibetan children. Children who had tried to escape from poverty by getting a good education; only to find that their final grades are worthless and that the best grades have been awarded to the Chinese students.

He called it grade fixing.

He spoke of the despair of parents, their dreams for their child’s future falling into dust, when their child finally returned home with nothing. Of how these parents then sometimes would turn against their own child accusing them of being worthless and lazy for failing to achieve. He told how such parents, angry that to find that all their scrimping and saving had been for nothing, would then refuse to listen to their child protestations that they’d been cheated of their rightful grades. They found it incomprehensible that the education system in which they’d placed such faith and hope could be corrupt.

In an unending stream of words he told of how some children too frightened to return home with the news of their ‘failure’ turn to drugs, or commit suicide.

As a monk people had turned to him for help, telling him of their despair and he in turn told us of how simply changing the grades on a piece of paper could lead to family breakdown, poverty and despair.

With gentle sounds like the murmurings of a hundred bees, he told of how the poor in Tibet can not access hospitals because they do not have enough money to pay. The sick have to rely on unskilled practitioners of medicine, often discovering that more harm is done than good. Thus the health of the Tibetan native population is weakened.

He spoke of how there is no freedom to practice your religious beliefs in Tibet. To become a monk the Chinese authorities, who have limited the number permitted so that a monk has to die before the next can join the monastery, ensure that the successful applicant is one who denounces the Dalai lama, the Panchen Lama and any claims for Tibet to be free. Many monks and nuns who are unable to agree to these conditions attempt to flee Tibet. In the mountains are Chinese soldiers who shoot at unharmed women and children. Kelsang Namtso was such a nun who was killed as she tried to cross the Himalayas. She was seventeen.

The Tibetan flag was raised today in memory of Kelsang Namtso by the Mayor with over a hundred people watching and applauding. Perhaps as the Olympic flag is raised there should only be empty stadiums and no sound of applause to be heard in China until Tibet is returned to its people.

Mud Hounds and Worms

There were worms on the paths in the park, long thin worms. The blackbirds were having an easy breakfast, and so rich was the feast they were finding food with on every hop. The worms had risen to the surface to escape the waterlogged ground.

England is famous for its rain, but we have had heavier downpours than usual. Water stands in pools where there have never been pools before. The crocuses have taken a mournful battering, their petals spread like cloaks on the muddy ground. Pigeons are hunched with fluffed out feathers standing precariously on one leg waiting for the sun to dry them out. And all around them pools reflect the blue of the sky, or glitter with silver light from the sun.

The blue sky will make a good backdrop for any flag that is flown today. It will raise our eyes from the mud that is around our feet or in my case from my trousers. A wayward hound had decided to jump up against my leg with a bounding enthusiastic greeting and cover my trouser leg in mud.

Dogs do that.

They look around for some hapless soul who is absorbed in the study of damp pigeons, hapless worms or ruined crocuses and then after first dabbing each paw in the appropriate amount of mud they then launch themselves into a trajectory that will ensures total coverage. It’s a friendly gesture!

The dog owner then descends on the newly anointed, besplattered soul and begins a conversation.

‘You’ve a nice smile,’ the unapologetic owner comments as I fend off his mutt.
I grunt in reply.
‘Oh, has he jumped on you?’ the unabashed dog owner says. While his dog is presently mud wrestling with my leg right before his eyes.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I apologise in my traditional humble British downtrodden style.
‘I’ll put the lead on him,’ the unashamed dog owner comments as Fido for good measure whisks his pond-dunked tail against the other leg, before releasing as many airborne mud droplets as he can in a twisting body shake all over me.
‘So why were you smiling?’ the unapologetic, unabashed, unashamed dog owner asks.
I notice the past tense and grimace. This is enough encouragement for the dog owner to fall into step beside me; while Fido (the dog’s real name has been hidden here to protect his identity) trots obediently by his side.
How our conversation ended with a discussion about Polish prisoners being walled up in granite caverns in the Channel Islands by German soldiers during the Second World War I don’t know, but it did.
After our ways parted, and his mud hound trotted obediently away, I was left with this man's stories: prisoners who were entombed in the granite caverns they’d been carving out; a man who was found with potatoes in his pockets and who was then shot. How some of the German soldiers were tolerant and would turn a blind eye, whilst others had that meaner streak that led them to enjoy the cruelty they could inflict on others under their power.
A cloud had darkened the sky and I shivered.
I rescued two worms on the way back hiding them under crocus shawls away from their oppressors: the orange-eyed ruffled pigeons and the sprightly blackbirds.

The sky was blue again, a perfect day for raising a flag.

The Freeing of Bozo

Today I let Bozo go.
Bozo, in the way of all freed mice, scampered off in low parabolas as if the earth under his tiny feet was hot to the touch. He made his quick bouncing leaps up the slight hill and disappeared into the longer grass of the field. Another mouse added to the eco-system of the Fields.

I’d found him this morning, his fur was spiked as if he’d been using the latest in fashionable mouse hair gels. His large delicate ears, like huge radar discs on his head, seemed more suited to tracking the activities of the outer solar system than simply listening for my footfalls. His face was tiny in comparison, with dark bead-like eyes that were set in a default mode of a panicked stare. A worm-like tail completed the picture.

He was trapped in the humane mouse trap. The slight rattling sound I heard as I entered the kitchen stopped as I switched on the light, but it was too late, I’d heard him. I knew he was there and that a car journey to the Fields was about to take place.

It’s been sometime since we’ve caught a mouse in the trap. Chocolate seems to be the best bait. It’s probably the crumbs of chocolate on the floor that have lured them into the kitchen in the first place; together with the delicious smell of melting chocolate that permeates the house most weeks as we make “Chocolate Crunchies”. Our recipe, has over time, increased the proportion of chocolate over all the other ingredients. This greed has inadvertently led to our loss. The Chocolate Crunchies we now make are more friable and likely to disintegrate into tiny fragments on that perilous journey between hand and mouth. One exploded a moment ago into a myriad of tiny fragments and had to be vacuumed up. No doubt a few minuscule particles that we have missed have proved a veritable feast for any visiting rodents.

The mouse problem started before Christmas. We’ve been catching one every two or three weeks in the kitchen mousetrap. Each has had its own unique personality which they display once I reach the Fields and release them. Bozo today couldn’t wait to get out. He must have been trapped all night and from the look of his spiky hair he’d broken into quite a sweat. He was tiny, hardly more than the thought of a mouse, but he was determined, and was brave enough to try to chew on whatever plastic edges he could find. Releasing him was difficult. He had remembered the way in and was determined that that was also going to be his way out. As I gently raised the flap he was over it riding it like a perilous seesaw refusing to jump off it even as it threatened to squish him into oblivion against the roof of the trap.

I waited and tried again. Bozo, smart though he was with his streetwise punk hairdo, wasn’t going to learn. Again he rode the seesaw as if it was an extreme sport. It was the way he was getting his thrills. His philosophy seemed to be: ‘I’m doomed so I might as well have fun.’ As soon as I raised the exit instead of going under the flap he was again on top of it, riding it fuelled with mouse adrenaline as the ceiling threatened to squeeze out his life for a second time.

Other mice have had different exit strategies. One, not wanting to leave the safety of the trap, had pressed with its paws against its plastic sides, bracing itself in a fight against gravity. Even when the trap was vertical this mouse had not tumbled onto the soft grass below. Like trying to extract sauce from a sauce bottle the trap had to be gently shaken and tapped before Spider Mouse, who I’m convinced had suckers on his paws, finally slipped to freedom.

Another mouse had waited patiently for the trap door to open before sedately ambling out quite calmly and sniffing the air before springing away.

Something finally pinged in Bozo’s mind and the door was finally raised. Off he went with unerring leaps towards the thicker grass in the Fields. The grass was wet and cold perhaps that’s why he was leaping, as if each contact with the ground was a shock after the luxury of a warm floor in a centrally heated kitchen.

As I prepare to wash and disinfect the kitchen floor, I’m hoping that he won’t have a homing instinct; the Fields are a half mile away and he did bound off in the wrong direction; though perhaps we will wait awhile before we prepare the next batch of Chocolate Crunchies!

Semi-centenarian

It was a milestone event. Though when I saw the queue I nearly turned around and ran.
Having passed through the portals of being fifty years of age I was now at last eligible for one of the perks such semi-centenarians can enjoy, namely reduced prices in the swimming baths!


I joined the slow moving queue that just shuffled along to the desk. Those ahead of me were fumbling in their pockets for the right change or were asking the patient woman at the desk to repeat her words.


When it was finally my turn I waited for the woman at the desk to peer at me closely. ‘You’re not old enough for the over 50’s swim,’ I wanted to hear her say. ‘You’re far too young.’

And I would have basked in the affirmative murmurs of those whose audio devices had been turned on and tuned in.

But she didn’t. She took my money without any question, and handed me my green wrist band without a word. Disappointed not to be challenged, I went to get changed.

There was a friendly babble of conversation in the pool. It seems most swimmers had brought their buddies along. The life-guards had not divided the pool into lanes so the whole expanse was open and inviting.

I was determined not to swim lengths and to break the mould expected of a semi-centenarian, so I swam all around the edge of the pool several times, and then struck out at the diagonals.

I was surrounded by confident stately swimmers, swimming lengths, often swimming in pairs who carried on a relaxed conversation as if they were chatting over a coffee.

The few snatches of conversation I overheard were earnest and serious. Pension plans were being discussed in all four corners of the pool. Hospital appointments were the topic of interest in the shallow end, and discussions as to where to store medicines absorbed the thoughts of those in the middle of the pool who teetered on the edge of the deep.

The mis-guided fantasy I’d had of a handsome millionaire with a burnished body surfacing next to me with smoldering eyes who would whisk me off to his castle in the country was splashed into droplets of chlorinated pain as a bald toothless man ran me down.

‘It’s a wonder they can swim and talk at the same time,’ he said in a disparaging tone about the two women in whose wake we now floundered.

I bit my lip, a nervous habit I still have and swam after them keen to put as much distance as I could between myself and Mr Cheerful.

At the midway point I paused and watched everyone go by. These are my peers. This is the club that I have inadvertently walked into. The two happily chatting women swam by me again. They had dyed permed blonde hair which even though they’d been swimming for nearly half an hour was still dry. Their powdery make-up was also unscathed. Thankfully myopia saved me from seeing anybody else as clearly. The pool had a Monet quality whose distant lily pads had a disconcerting way of revealing themselves to be toothless faces with tired expressions.

Then the true ordeal began. One by one as the hour reached its end, individuals would reach for the steps; and each time a worn body exhibited its battle scars: wounds from the surgeons’ knives; flubbering cellulite that puckered and wobbled as they falteringly reached for a towel; legs that were unsure of the line of the true horizon. Each body a terrible warning of what time has in store for a semi-centenarian such as me.

‘Don’t go again,’ a friend has warned.

But I know I will. These are now my peers. The ones that are brave enough to swim. The ones who are doing what they can to keep healthy and to defer the inevitable for yet another day. The ones who don’t care what others see because it isn’t important anymore.

And anyway, I haven’t quite joined them:I swam diagonals!