No life
In the swim
Jeremy Clarke
I'm swimming again, as well as running. Three, sometimes four times a week, I drive ten miles to this newly opened indoor swimming pool and swim up and down for about 40 minutes. When they first started building the pool 18 months ago, it was generally assumed — hoped even — that it would turn out to be a cheap, third-rate affair like every other public amenity that has been put up in that backward-looking town since 1945. But, to everybody's aston- ishment, when it was finished it turned out to be a very large, very lovely swimming pool; far and away the best one for miles around. It owes much of its success to high blue-tinted glass walls that let in the maxi- mum amount of natural light. In fine weather the pool is flooded from top to bottom with dancing sunlight, and the effect is both beautiful and sexy. If you go early enough, you can swim and watch the sun coming up at the same time.
The pool was such a hit that from the day it was opened the town has been buoyed up on a wave of civic pride. Not since the alcoholic dwarf and his convicted paedophile father were bludgeoned to death, mutilated and set on fire by a group of unemployed teenagers have the local townspeople been as collectively exhilarat- ed. Phrases like 'community spirit' and 'our children's future' are still peppering the let- ters page of the local paper. Property prices have risen slightly. An ecumenical church service of thanksgiving is being planned. And people of all ages are learn- ing how wonderful it is to be able to swim.
Naturally enough, in a rural area such as this, there are people who have had little or no previous experience of either indoor swimming pools or unisex changing rooms. On the very first day, a 57-year-old farm labourer was cautioned by police for allegedly exposing himself in a cubicle. And an unclaimed pair of wellingtons and a decomposing ferret were discovered in a locker after a persistent smell was traced to its source. In the pool itself a 25-year-old supermarket manager sustained a nasty head injury after taking a running dive into the shallow end.
When the pool was divided into lanes to cater for the serious swimmers, problems also occurred when new swimmers pre- sumed an entitlement to one lane each on a first-come-first-served basis. I myself was reprimanded and then lightly assaulted by an elderly lady who believed that, by swim- ming in a lane that was already occupied by her, I had taken a serious liberty. But there's nothing that a few extra signs in the changing room and at the poolside won't sort out.
Since I've started swimming at this new pool, I've been seeing people in the water whom I haven't seen since I left here ten years ago. I used to be a dustman and I lived in a house nearby, which I furnished from top to bottom with articles salvaged from the back of a dustcart. I drank a lot m those days. When I left the council, I moved away and quickly lost touch with everyone. Most of those I meet in the pool `Who goes there — boyfriend or foe?' from years gone by remember me a lot more clearly than I remember them.
Last week, in the deep end, I met Ron- nie, a bloke I'd worked with when I first started on the bins. We were good mates at one time — though we hadn't seen each other since 1989. He swam up from behind me, got an arm round my throat and tried to strangle me: `Danish!'
`Ronnie!' I choked.
`What are you doing now? Where are you working? Still on refuse?'
When I told Ron I was no longer a bin- man, that I was now a journalist, he looked at me for a moment to see whether I was joking or not. When he saw I was serious, he looked crestfallen. He asked me politely how I had gone from being a bin-man to being a journalist, what the money was like, and so on, but he wasn't really interested. I told him I often thought about going back on the bins, and he said I always was a bit of a tart. Then he swam back to his kid. He blanked me after that. They both did. When he and his kid got out of the pool and walked towards the showers, neither of them looked in my direction.
Since then I've bought a pair of swim- ming goggles with mirror lenses and a fluo- rescent orange swimming hat. Nobody recognises me any more, and there's no more explaining to do. I do my 30 or 40 lengths and I get out.
Now I'm just the twat in the hat — that's all.
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