Consuming Interest
In the Swim
By LESLIE ADRIAN I THINK it's the excep- tional parent who doesn't allow a few lugubrious thoughts about his child's drowning to throw a slight pall over a holiday by the sea, or even one within reach of a swim- ming pool. A cork or rubber ring gives some measure of security, but children come to rely on them, and what should be natural ability to swim is postponed in- definitely. And they are not as safe as. all that; they puncture or deflate too easily, and are liable to come bobbing off in the waves.
So it was with interest that I heard from the parents of a six-year-old girl, recently returned from a holiday in Italy, that they had run across a new teaching aid which, they thought, will revolutionise • teaching methods. Like so many effective inventions, it is breathtakingly simple: the child simply wears four inflated plastic cuffs, around wrists and ankles (the two around the ankles being smaller, so that the swimmer isn't made top-heavy and thus overbalanced).
At first, the cuffs are inflated to the full; gradu- ally, according to the confidence the child dis- plays, air is let out of the cuffs; then the anklets are removed; and finally the wrist bands are left off, and the child is swimming freely and alone. This process—from reliance on all four inflated cuffs to nothing at all—was effected by their six- year-old in three days. And this with a child who had been previously afraid to go in with a rubber ring and an attendant mother.
What impressed the parents most of all was oot so much the speed with which their child had learned to swim but her resulta'nt lack of fear of water. Not only was she swimming
un- aided on the third day, but also diving from the pool side and jumping off the diving boards. And believing the cufflets unique to Italy, they bought a unit, made by the Brevetto-Audisio • Company in Turin and costing 5s. per cuff.
1 have discovered that they needn't have bothered; an enterprising English swimming in- structor who teaches at Marylebone's Seymour. Hall. R. H. Brickett, saw a Swiss model some eighteen months ago, and has begun to manufac- ture them here. A member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Mr. Brickett has made some refinements on the continental models which he believes ensure greater safety. He sells the cufflets alone, believing the anklets might overbalance the beginner, and has made
r, a double valve on each one in case one of the two should become unstoppered. His 'Brickett,' are used now by all the Seymour Bath instruc- tors and endorsed by the Amateur Swimming Association.
He tells me that he has seen children, 'pre- viously terrified of water, swim in two days after ,
using 'Bricketts.' The psychological reasons for their success, he believes, are that a child finds himself swimming almost before he's aware of an aid : feeling little support to begin with, he doesn't become panicky when this support is re- moved. • As panic is one of the main causes of drowning, he says, its absence is a child's best insurance against disaster.
Though they are being sold in some sports shops, probably the easiest way to get a pair of these cuffs is from the maker himself, either by writing or ringing: R. H. Brickett, 11 South Lodge Drive, London, NI4 (LABurnum 1525). They are 8s. a pair, which includes the cost of packaging and mailing.
Incidentally, though Mr. Brickett has much to say about the early instilling of confidence as regards water, he doesn't tell us what to do about over-confidence—something he's not insured against himself. He almost drowned off the English coast when the tide turned during a long, enjoyable crawl not so long ago. Even the most experienced swimmer, he feels, might do well to tuck a pair of cufflets in his bathing dress before taking off for a long swim.
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