How deceitful are bathing costumes!



I chose what I thought was a rather fetching and newish costume for my second foray into the municipal pool. I packed it carefully into a more commodious back pack and waited impatiently for the day to end so that I could go and have a swim which would be priced at only €75 (the original €150 now being divided by two).


Wednesday is one of my early finishes and so I was able to join the motorway without the interminable crawl that fumes its way slowly along when the parents add their massive cars to our miniscule roads.


I have now learned how to get changed without balancing on one leg and seeing all my clothes fall onto the unspeakable wet and dirty floor of the changing room and in double quick time I was striding purposefully towards where I now knew the pool lurked.


Swim hat on head, flip flops on feet and loins girded with bathing costume and clutching my goggles I approached the lanes with a little more confidence and plunged in.


As a concession to the concept of “warming up” I started a length of breast stroke but my bathing costume seemed reluctant to follow me!


Like the Wife of Bath I am “nat undergrowe” and I assumed that the generous curves of the lower part of my body would dissuade the material from declaring UDI. However, my stroke and frog like splaying of the legs was more directed to modesty than speed and I made my ungainly and careful way back down the length to the relative security of the swimming ledge at the edge of the pool.


The solution, fairly obviously, was to tighten the draw string of the bathing costume. But thereby lay a problem: it was already tied in knot which tended to the Gordian.


I realized after a few minutes that standing in the water with hands submerged groping at my groin was not, to say the least, decorous.


I tried a length or two with buttocks tensed and a sort of undulating jerk of the body to keep the recalcitrant bathers in place, but eventually had to admit defeat and retire to the showers to give the knot the attention it deserved.


With the help of broken nails and teeth (and a few odd stares) I eventually got the knot untied and put the costume back on.


At which point one end of the drawstring disappeared through the hole which is supposed to be too small to allow that sort of thing to happen.


Off came the costume again and what should have been a fairly easy “push along and grab” operation turned into a major effort and which almost had me tearing the material apart in naked (and I mean that very literally) frustration.


Brute force eventually got the end out again and, after tying large knots at the end of each end of the drawstring I replaced the garment yet again and tightened the waist.


Unfortunately my grappling with the thing had upset the equilibrium of the material so that the costume now had all the leaden grace which would have accompanied it had it been knitted with wool. I know of what I speak as photographs exist of a far younger and more innocent me looking hapless in a one-piece garment which appeared as though it had been created by a character from “The Vicar of Dibley”.

By this time I was in that mood of excited, trembling, suppressed frustration where if only the drawstring had survived my ministrations I would have walked fearlessly and defiantly into the pool.


My modesty was, however churlishly, covered and with the vague feeling that my bathing costume was acting as though it belonged to somebody else, I completed my swim, with extra minutes thrown in to cover the hiatus of structural stress.


By the time I got out into the café I felt that I fully deserved by coffee and croissant.


I have decided not to join the General Strike which has been called for the 29th of September. Was the only teacher in the entire school to have voiced support for the venture and I am not prepared to put my head on the chopping block in a costly gesture which I fear will achieve nothing. On the day of the strike my first lesson is at 10 am, so even if I am delayed by heavy traffic on the roads I will still probably get there in time.


It will be interesting to see if our parents, who tend to own rather than work for, make it to school with their offspring. If I had framed that last sentence as a question, it would have been entirely rhetorical as I am sure that the parents would move heaven and earth to make sure that their kids are out of the house and in the care of others!


I am not sure if I am doing the right (how many sense that word can be taken in) thing, but I am past the point where I feel like drawing my glittering sword of truth and exclaiming “Excelsior!” on a deserted mountain top of probity with only the echoes of my own convictions to keep me company!


I must cultivate my garden or at least keep on swimming!