Swimming at night in our pool I realized just how selfish sport actually is.
Of the three pools which are virtually adjacent to each other in our area, ours is the only one which is not illuminated during the night. I see this as a disadvantage while Toni sees it in a positive light as everything in the summer time is taken and evaluated in how far it encourages mosquitoes.
To be fair his paranoia has some foundation as the winged avengers seem to make (if I might be permitted to use an insectual metaphor) a bee-line for his blood stream. No Catalan mosquito worth its name is going to sample my foreign blood while succulent home grown corpuscles are flowing in the vicinity. This means that Toni’s legs look as though they have been used for target practice by swarms of beasts with sharpened proboscises whereas mine look as though they have been laved in daily baths of asses’ milk. Result!
Meanwhile: myopic swimming in the dark. Which isn’t really dark because of the light spill from the surrounding buildings; just light enough to highlight the blurred, dark, slow moving ripples and give you the impression that you are actually swimming through something like the BP oil slick – but “BP light” all the visual appeal but with none of the cloying viscosity and acrid smell of the real thing.
I am not an imaginative swimmer: I go up and down and up and down only varying the stroke from front crawl to breast stroke.
I wear ear plugs because my ears tend to retain water extending the muffled world of the pool into real life. Indeed I have a nodule in my right ear which is there as a result of swimming. It also allowed me to do my duty to the National Health Service as I was called in to the Heath Hospital to be a sample patient for budding consultants to see whether they could recognize my little nodule and its possible causes. It is, I am told, quite harmless and would cause more problems to have it operated on than to leave it, so I keep it as a precious souvenir of years of daily swimming.
Gently pushing off (remembering the arthritis)from the side of a dark pool at night you can only see (thanks to my excellent new goggles from Herr Lidl which make my short sighted view of the pool a sharp short sighted view of the pool) grey arms pointing forwards into a shapeless murk which is the rest of the pool. The only sound is your exhaled breath magnified by the ear plugs: a little world of mystery.
Luckily the spilled light meant that the end of the pool was distinguished from the rest of the murky world that I inhabit without my glasses, so I was able to turn without injury.
Even when the pool is crowded with the raucous cronies of the “popular” girl next door and her own pitiful squeaks resound across the water, an easy crawl and exhalation under water and the world of the pool erases all other human activity.
Of course there are people in the pool to contend with but, as long as you are doing lengths on the side which does not have the steps to exit then you are generally left alone. There is also a way of swimming which tells everyone that you are not going to stop and that they are going to be hurt more than you if there is a collision: I make sure of that. Fairly long nails are also a good idea as water merely acts as a lubricant for judicious slashing!
At least I am honest about the anti-social appeal of swimming unlike so-called team players where you only have to watch a striker rip congratulatory hands from himself so that he can appear alone in front of the corner camera after scoring a goal to realize that it is all self, self, self!
Perhaps squash, which I also enjoyed, is the most selfish of the racket sports because as soon as the serve is played the players sets about talking over the whole of the playing space. Even in boxing there is a corner which is yours. I am sure that there is a thesis to be written (or probably has been written) on “Seven Types of Selfishness: a study of self in sport.”
The first child has now jumped into the pool and the serenity which has characterised by tea drinking on the third floor is now shattered. The first child has now been joined by a second and where there are two children “communicating” even the civilizing effects of tea are no match for the volume of sound.
To the sound of car horns and explosions Spain have made it through to the final of the world cup. This is an historic achievement as they have always been dogged by bad luck and dreadful refereeing in previous competitions. Perhaps this is Spain’s year. We shall see.
Tomorrow Barcelona and book buying and a little light teaching.
Of the three pools which are virtually adjacent to each other in our area, ours is the only one which is not illuminated during the night. I see this as a disadvantage while Toni sees it in a positive light as everything in the summer time is taken and evaluated in how far it encourages mosquitoes.
To be fair his paranoia has some foundation as the winged avengers seem to make (if I might be permitted to use an insectual metaphor) a bee-line for his blood stream. No Catalan mosquito worth its name is going to sample my foreign blood while succulent home grown corpuscles are flowing in the vicinity. This means that Toni’s legs look as though they have been used for target practice by swarms of beasts with sharpened proboscises whereas mine look as though they have been laved in daily baths of asses’ milk. Result!
Meanwhile: myopic swimming in the dark. Which isn’t really dark because of the light spill from the surrounding buildings; just light enough to highlight the blurred, dark, slow moving ripples and give you the impression that you are actually swimming through something like the BP oil slick – but “BP light” all the visual appeal but with none of the cloying viscosity and acrid smell of the real thing.
I am not an imaginative swimmer: I go up and down and up and down only varying the stroke from front crawl to breast stroke.
I wear ear plugs because my ears tend to retain water extending the muffled world of the pool into real life. Indeed I have a nodule in my right ear which is there as a result of swimming. It also allowed me to do my duty to the National Health Service as I was called in to the Heath Hospital to be a sample patient for budding consultants to see whether they could recognize my little nodule and its possible causes. It is, I am told, quite harmless and would cause more problems to have it operated on than to leave it, so I keep it as a precious souvenir of years of daily swimming.
Gently pushing off (remembering the arthritis)from the side of a dark pool at night you can only see (thanks to my excellent new goggles from Herr Lidl which make my short sighted view of the pool a sharp short sighted view of the pool) grey arms pointing forwards into a shapeless murk which is the rest of the pool. The only sound is your exhaled breath magnified by the ear plugs: a little world of mystery.
Luckily the spilled light meant that the end of the pool was distinguished from the rest of the murky world that I inhabit without my glasses, so I was able to turn without injury.
Even when the pool is crowded with the raucous cronies of the “popular” girl next door and her own pitiful squeaks resound across the water, an easy crawl and exhalation under water and the world of the pool erases all other human activity.
Of course there are people in the pool to contend with but, as long as you are doing lengths on the side which does not have the steps to exit then you are generally left alone. There is also a way of swimming which tells everyone that you are not going to stop and that they are going to be hurt more than you if there is a collision: I make sure of that. Fairly long nails are also a good idea as water merely acts as a lubricant for judicious slashing!
At least I am honest about the anti-social appeal of swimming unlike so-called team players where you only have to watch a striker rip congratulatory hands from himself so that he can appear alone in front of the corner camera after scoring a goal to realize that it is all self, self, self!
Perhaps squash, which I also enjoyed, is the most selfish of the racket sports because as soon as the serve is played the players sets about talking over the whole of the playing space. Even in boxing there is a corner which is yours. I am sure that there is a thesis to be written (or probably has been written) on “Seven Types of Selfishness: a study of self in sport.”
The first child has now jumped into the pool and the serenity which has characterised by tea drinking on the third floor is now shattered. The first child has now been joined by a second and where there are two children “communicating” even the civilizing effects of tea are no match for the volume of sound.
To the sound of car horns and explosions Spain have made it through to the final of the world cup. This is an historic achievement as they have always been dogged by bad luck and dreadful refereeing in previous competitions. Perhaps this is Spain’s year. We shall see.
Tomorrow Barcelona and book buying and a little light teaching.
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