Terry the Fish

I have made tentative enquiries about swimming lessons. It feels a little embarrassing if I’m honest, that a big old lump like me should be looking at donning fluorescent armbands, grabbing hold of a polystyrene float so tightly that my hands fuse onto it and take to the water. That is of course if I’m going back in time to 1982 to have these lessons.

OK, so my tentative enquiries have so far consisted of looking on the Bourne Leisure Centre website. The next is filling in the application form and dropping it off. Apparently lessons start three times a year; in January, April, and September. The website outlines that lessons are for adults who are beginners and are a “little afraid of the water”. A little? Let’s see, how about very afraid. So afraid that I am convinced that every time I step into a Municipal Baths that I am about to drown, horribly, possibly whilst choking on a discarded plaster.

This is why I need to grow into this idea slowly. My plan is to go to the pool with the present Mrs Hayward and build a little confidence. Mrs H is concerned about this as she feels that I will be relying on her to rescue me if I get into trouble but I have pointed out that a) they have their own Lifeguards and b) I am not likely to go much further than waist deep. Most probably I will be overtaken by three-year-olds sliding elegantly through the water like Conger Eels whilst I cling on to the edge of the pool as if my life depends upon it.

When I go on holiday to places where there is a pool or even better, the sea, then I do, over the period of the week, take tentative steps into the water after unflatteringly inserting myself into a rubber ring (usually the one that looks like a big tyre – it’s about as manly as rubber rings get).

Over the course of the week my confidence grows until I am happy to bob around, slightly out of my depth. Weirdly I prefer the undulating sea rather than the flat sterile pool. I even like a bit of a wave to sweep me back to shore a bit, although this could have ended in disaster in Gran Canaria a few years ago when the mother of all waves reared itself up and I had no choice but to be swept along in the hope that I stayed upright within the ring.

For once my beer belly saved my life as I was so jammed into the thing that even the cruel sea could not extract me from it. The fact that I surfaced somewhere off the coast of Morocco is neither here nor there.

So, the plan is in (slow) motion and I’m quite excited that before long I will be cruising through the water like Flipper. I may be too late for the Olympics in 2012 but look forward to my future career as a thong-wearing Lifeguard on the beach at Skegness. It’ll be like Baywatch: Lincolnshire.

Watch this space.