Flying Without (Water) Wings

Anybody who follows me on Twitter, or even on Facebook, may have seen that yesterday I got up from my pit at an unseemly time for a Sunday morning. Well, 7.30am is not a time I usually see on a Sunday unless there’s an early morning Grand Prix on, and there was no fear of that yesterday. In fact the Grand Prix was on for most of the day it seemed and didn’t finish until I was getting ready for bed. What a race though. Those last few laps certainly woke me up. Go Button!! 

The present Mrs Hayward wouldn’t agree of course. She doesn’t follow the sport apart from when the TV coverage shows Mark Webber with his top off, but she is certain that she doesn’t like Jenson Button. She thinks he’s smug and cheesy and his father is an oik. I think Jenson is more likeable than Lewis Hamilton and his father seems like a down-to-earth sort who is plainly having a ball but we can’t agree on everything.

So, back to the reason for my early rising. If you had seen my update yesterday morning you’d have known that I got up for an early morning swim at the pool. Very sensible you might think. A nice bit of exercise before the day gets going. A chance to get in a few laps whilst the pool is quiet.

Well, yes, the pool was quiet. When I arrived I was sharing the water with a couple of old codgers who had risen early to cheat death for another day and who had gone for a refreshing dip to get the joints working. A few others turned up and, until 9am when some small kids and their parents arrived and the water flume cranked into life, it was all fairly chilled out.

I knew it would be, it’s why I went, but if you have a vision of me sliding through the water like an Eel you would be much mistaken. I went there because my confidence is at an all-time low. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made good progress, I can front crawl with the best of them, for a few strokes at least. The problem is I am always heading towards the wall. The thought of swimming away from the wall fills me with terror. The only way that direction leads is to a watery grave. 

I made the mistake of telling the instructors this at my lesson on Thursday. This was always a mistake as they then made me have a go at it. 

They tried various methods to encourage me to stop swimming and stand up before I reached the edge, even to the extremes of Tracy (one of the instructors) standing in front of the wall so I couldn’t reach it. This meant I resorted to either swimming around her, grabbing her arms for dear life, or flailing around upside down in the water until I found my footing. It was by no means a roaring success.

They then tried to introduce me to the concept of gliding with a view to gliding and then standing up. This panicked me. It’s no use, to my mind, trying to introduce a second concept to me without me mastering the first one. I can’t glide. That’s not swimming. I only do the front crawl to stay afloat. 

I don’t think they understood this. So due to the constraints of time, and having to teach some other beginners that only recently joined, I was packed off to the shallower end of the pool to try an exercise in learning how to glide which I was frankly too terrified to do. 

I left the lesson feeling quite deflated, the complete opposite of how I felt the previous week. So, I decided I needed to regain my confidence by swimming with the coffin dodgers. Well, actually their presence was irrelevant to my confidence. I just felt they might have the public spirit to fish me out if things went wrong.

I went back and practised my front crawl, over and over again, towards the pool edge. It was whilst I was doing this that I realised what the problem was. I’m still not confident in the water. Yes, I’m more confident and I can get a few strokes in but I don’t feel at all comfortable, especially under the water. I stuck my head under a few times but only for a couple of seconds, if that.

What I really need is some confidence building exercises in buoyancy, balance, and being under the water. Until that point I’m not going to progress very far as I’ll always be swimming to the edge. I will try to explain this at the next lesson but it’s dawning on me as to why there are others at the swimming lessons who have done the same 14 week course time and time again. There’s another guy there, a ginger chap, friendly, a little bit older than me, who has obviously done the course before but is still terrified and is no better than I am after my paltry 5 weeks. 

It makes me wonder about the techniques used to teach us. It’s all very well teaching people the technique of swimming but that doesn’t help with the initial fear of being in the water. Hazel can stand at the edge of the pool and provide instruction and encouragement, and dip her pole into the water when I sink to the bottom, but that’s about as useful to me as throwing me in the deep end and hoping for the best.

I’ll go again on Thursday and explain my theory and see what happens. They may have a few suggestions as to what I should do to conquer the fear. I do hope so. 

If anything I don’t want to waste the money I spent on the course, especially as I had hopes of Olympic glory. I’ve seen online that there are other courses that may be better suited to me, more focussed on gaining confidence rather than the old fashioned approach. Unfortunately none of these courses are held where I live so I’m stuck with Hazel and her pole for the time being.

It’s not a complete disaster but I do feel a bit disappointed that I’m allowing my own fears to hold me back. I kept looking at an old chap nearby who was scything his way through the water like a geriatric version of The Man From Atlantis with absolute amazement, wondering how on earth he was doing it.

 You may not understand this predicament. If someone told me they were too afraid to drive I would struggle to understand it as it comes quite naturally to me and I have always been quite confident behind the wheel, even if it did take me two attempts to pass the driving test. It wasn’t my fault per se. My opinion was that when the examiner said to “pull over to the left” he didn’t specify that I should stay on the road. 

There was a rumour that used to circulate at the time that anything you did wrong in the first five minutes of a driving test wasn’t counted. I can vouch for the fact that this is not true. Mind you, there was also a rumour that the examiner I had on my first test, a seedy looking  man with a grey leather jacket and tinted glasses called Mr Evans, always failed the boys but passed the girls. This seemed to hold some water. I know of a girl he passed first time who, within a year, had an almighty accident on the M27 whilst she was scrabbling around on the floor looking for the All About Eve cassette she’d just dropped. 

She walked away unscathed but the car was a right off and the motorway was shut for 3 hours, much to the chagrin of other drivers. Nice work Mr Evans.

I passed the second time thanks to a lovely lady whose name I forget. She was much more generous in her marking and even let me off the sudden screeching halt I came to at the traffic lights on Winchester Road. She said that I will know not to do that next time. I guess she saw my raw driving talent. Either that or she felt she didn’t ever want to be sat in a car with me again. But I digress.

I find that the swimming pool environment is still an alien place to me. A place where you wander into the changing rooms at your peril as you are only ever seconds away from making accidental eye contact with an old man’s bare arse or a ginger man’s scrotum. Seriously I’m not looking out for this, I don’t get off on it, it’s just all there in plain view. Some men are more open with their nakedness than is surely good for them and I certainly didn’t sign up for that.

I’m going to go for another quick visit to the pool some time before Thursday so wish me luck, and look out for the headline in the local paper: SEMI-NAKED OCTOGENARIAN RESCUES DROWNING IDIOT. 

Read all about it.

Are You Being Served?

I have a love/hate relationship with supermarkets. On one hand they are fun to browse around and coo in wonderment at the retail opportunities available to me. On the other hand they are desperate hell holes of confusion and crowds, where the one item I require is so well hidden that a team of trained tracker dogs couldn’t sniff it out and, even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to reach it for all the people with trolleys, and buggies, and pensioners in wheelchairs, and supplementary screaming kids careering around on heelys. 

I find there’s always a screaming child somewhere in a supermarket. Either that or they’re piping the sound in for some reason, perhaps to force me into a quick and random retail purchase to escape the noise. That happens to me quite often, I angrily throw random things in my basket, tutting about how it sounds like a pig is being tortured, and when I get home I wonder why on earth I’ve bought 20 AA batteries, some ointment for thrush, and a family size pack of liquorice allsorts when all I went in for was a pint of milk. 

It’s not just screaming kids (and in some cases their exasperated parents) that are the problem, although I fail to see why 3 adults and their 17 hysterical children need to trawl around Tesco together, it seems to be people in general. 

 It’s the old people who walk slowly, swaying ponderously from side to side, it’s the people with trolleys who just park them wherever they happen to have come to a halt, it’s the people who are always wanting to get to the shelf where I am, and it’s the people who decide to stop and have a conversation in the middle of the aisle. I know, a conversation, what are they thinking?? 

The problem is, you think you’ve escaped them when you get to the next aisle but before you’ve had a chance to see which exciting frozen products are on special offer this week along comes mum, dad, granny, sullen teenager, howling toddlers, and the whole damned circus starts again.

That’s because the supermarket is designed so that we all traverse the same route more or less, so for the 20 minutes or so I’m doing the weekly shop our lives are briefly entwined. I have been known to utter the words “I hate people” when shopping, but when you think about it, I guess it’s all the shop’s fault. They encourage us to bimble around, stop and look at the shiny new things on offer, and provide an open invitation to bring along Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all for the shopping experience.  

Bring Granny, she’ll buy some plants or surgical stockings, bring the kids, they will harass you into buying them sweets and toys, bring a cattle prod to get these relentlessly irritating people out of my way.

It’s no wonder that I forwent the supermarket for a while in favour of home delivery. It seemed to be a more civilised way of dealing with things. Thing is, I began to question the logic of this approach given that a nice shiny supermarket had opened up on my doorstep. It seemed churlish to ignore it. 

So there I was on Monday afternoon, spending part of my Bank Holiday dodging errant shoppers in a vain search for tumble drier sheets and mixed herbs (I succeeded with one but failed with the other). 

The nightmare doesn’t even end at the till point. Firstly you have to queue behind someone who has picked up the wrong item and we have to wait while they, or Tracy with the headset, goes to get the right item because they were too stupid to pick the right thing up in the first place (or perhaps because they were distracted by a distant scream from a giddy 5 year old or became momentarily light-headed from the intoxicating smell of Deep Heat from Grandpa). 

They then pack their shopping away very slowly one item at a time and finally they seem totally surprised that they have to pay for it. It’s the only way I can explain the rummaging through bags at the last minute for money. 

Then, when I get to pay for my few items the 13 year old lad on the checkout starts asking me ridiculous questions. 

“Have you been doing anything exciting today?”

“Well, funny you should ask, I went white water rafting, bungee jumped off the Eiffel Tower and set the world record for the longest distance achieved by a human being shot out of a cannon, what about you?” 

Leave me alone. I didn’t go to the supermarket for small talk, I went for tumble drier sheets and mixed herbs and when I found them in the over lit maze of a shop and followed the generic signs that aren’t truly helpful to the casual shopper I bought the wrong herbs apparently. I don’t even use mixed herbs and won’t use the fines herbes that I picked up in my haste to get out of this cavern of screeching and body odour and I’m now too embarrassed to take back because then I’d become as bad as the rest of them. They’ll live in my cupboard for years now.

To be honest I’ll probably go back to the supermarket again at some point this week so it can’t be that bad I guess. Maybe it’s a kind of mild sado-masochism on my part, just without the whips and chains. Which is a relief really as I look terrible in PVC shorts and I can’t stand the chafing of nipple clamps. 

But I digress…

Raise the Titanic

Is it safe to look? Is everything OK now? Good. 

I’ve had a bit of a mare on the technology front. Firstly my Facebook account was hacked into by an unknown person or thing who wanted to steal my identity no doubt. Good luck to them I say. If you’ve read my recent posts and wish to take on this duck-fearing existence then you are more than welcome to it. I’ll even throw in my drinking trousers just to get you on your way. Thanks to the very nice people at Facebook, perhaps even Mr Zuckerberg himself, this matter was quickly resolved with little collateral damage, apart from my hometown being changed to Bourne, Massachusetts. If anything it enhanced my knowledge of American Geography.

Then, in a totally unrelated incident this very website died. I logged in and it told me I didn’t have a blog anymore. I feared that one of you, possibly an ornithologist with a particular penchant for the Argentine Blue Bill Duck (and who wouldn’t, it is the vertebrate with the longest penis in relation to its body size, think of the possibilities if ducks made porn) had been incensed at my last post and sought revenge on me.  Fearing the worst I turned off all equipment with web access, which is more than you’d think, and tried to retreat into an e-hermit status. 

However I quickly became bored and lonely in my virtual cave so stuck my head out and discovered that this was not some feathered nemesis but a technical fault. So here I am, back out on the information superplodway and ready to Facebook, Twitter and blog until my heart is content in the hope that someone, somewhere will give a damn that I had sausage and chips for tea. 

OK, so I didn’t Facebook or Tweet such inanity as I was too busy stuffing my face with said sausage and chips and, as a man, multi tasking is not a strength. I have learnt this with my swimming as well. Oh yes, the swimming. What can I say? I feel a little embarrassed that I was making such a fuss in my previous posts but in all honesty I was absolutely terrified of being in deep water. The thing is I wanted to learn to get over this phobia so I forced myself into going for lessons. Posting on here has helped because I feel sort of responsible to keep it up now I’ve told people I’m doing it. 

You may not care two hoots but it motivates me and some people have asked me about it when we’ve met and, being a natural crowd pleaser, I feel obliged to share in my achievements rather than my abject failures. If I said that I’d chickened out and hid behind the sofa cramming Jaffa Cakes down my throat instead (which yesterday evening about 6.45pm did sound like a more attractive option) I would look like a pathetic loser and, even though you wouldn’t actually say it, I would still see the disapproval in your eyes, and quite right too.

However I have discovered a new perspective on the cruel sea, or Bourne Leisure Centre Pool as it’s known. It’s a sort of love/hate relationship I guess. For most of the day on Thursday I hate it. I would rather do anything to avoid going and was even wishing illness on myself last night to avoid the whole sorry spectacle of a grown lump of a man splashing around in the water. However I always end up going, I always do better than I thought I ever would, and then for the following 24 hours I love it. Then it starts to occur to me that next Thursday will come round before I know it and that feeling of dread takes over again.

I shouldn’t beat myself up though. Four lessons in and I have abandoned the flotation device (called a ‘woggle’ by Hazel, the instructor) and I’m doggy paddling. Last night I was even two strokes away from swimming five metres. Apparently that’s quite good given the fact that three weeks ago I was clinging to the side of the pool like a Limpet. 

I do find my confidence building while I’m there but I haven’t completely conquered my fear just yet. As any sailor will tell you, the sea is a cruel mistress and she is ready to welcome you into her warm embrace at any given moment. Yes I might be able to float on top of the water with ease, yes I can paddle with my arms, yes I can kick my feet, and yes I can breathe in, stick my head under the water and breathe out, but all of these things at once? Not a chance. 

Well I can for a while but every now and then Hazel has to remind me to kick or to breathe as I’ve forgotten. However I do seem to be improving and I was getting further and further away from the edge when she suggested I might like to try five metres. Feeling brave I decided that it can’t be that difficult so I went for it with gusto.

For the past few weeks I knew the day was coming where I would lose control and revert to where I believe I should be, flapping about at the bottom of the pool. I had been living on borrowed time, and last night the sands of time ran out. 

I started well, head in the water, arms paddling, legs doing something behind me, but as the side of the pool got nearer I realised that I was sinking. To be fair I got my feet back down and stopped, which was a surprise as I’d not done that before. Strangely undeterred I decided to go again. This time I thought too much about the whole ridiculousness of the situation. I can’t swim. I’m a natural drowner. I was probably the Titanic in a previous life. So, with the side of the pool in sight I drifted under the surface like a submarine.

However this submarine had legs and as they came down I slipped on the floor of the pool and lurched forward, my arms outstretched. Time slowed down. As I fell forward I felt some air of calm. No-one really tells you how serene and relaxing being underwater actually is. I reasoned that if I ended up on all fours staring at the tiles on the bottom of the pool I just needed to stand up again and all would be fine. I saw Hazel’s pole appear in the water ahead of me. She has this with her so that I can grab on to it so she can haul me out if needs be rather than to prod my lifeless corpse as I had previously suggested to her. I’m a tricky student.

Despite my predicament I didn’t feel that grabbing her pole would be appropriate or necessary. Whilst my mind was considering the options my legs took matters into their own hands (so to speak) and shifted themselves round so that my feet were firmly planted on the floor. Don’t ask me where they came from but before I knew it my head was once more above the water. I spluttered briefly and tried to regain my eyesight. Hazel asked if I was OK. In response I burped loudly as I guess I’d consumed a generous mouthful or two of chlorine-filled pool water. My heart was pounding like an express train but I was alive, and I had saved myself.

Part of this was down to a website I’d strayed onto the other week that pointed out that it takes a long time to drown. This thought I believe enabled me not to panic and flail around wildly and leads me to think that things aren’t as bad I thought they would be in this situation. If anything I was embarrassed rather than hysterical.

We gave up on attempting the five metres and I went back to what I was doing, paddling a shorter distance, but I’m not far away from it and no-one is more surprised about this than me. Even though it’s a relatively short distance they’ve got me swimming in just three lessons, and pushing me to do five metres in the fourth. Given there’s another ten lessons to come, who knows what I’ll be able to do come August? 

My hopes are on Olympic glory next year, even if it means becoming the new Eric the Eel. Wish me luck!!

Going Quackers

There I was, minding my own business, heading home from a little trip to Tesco to buy a watering can when I was startled by a fowl beast in the undergrowth. It served me right; I took the short cut by the stream (a charming term that doesn’t quite convey the shallow still water that the footpath accompanies, it was that or say it was a dyke but that would cause unnecessary sniggering at the back). 

It had crossed my mind that, at worst, there may be youths lurking around like youths are wont to do, although it turns out the modern day youth prefers to hang out on the bench near the kiddies ride outside Tesco eating pasties, no wonder there’s an obesity problem. At least I could out run them if they approached me with a shank. Oh yes, I know the street lingo, although my use of the word lingo may betray my real lack of coolness.

If there hadn’t been youths on the footpath to Tesco then it would be dogs off leads. This is a particular hazard when I’m out running as the dogs come bounding up to say ‘hello’ in that semi-aggressive way all dogs do. As a cat person (not literally) I am immediately suspicious of dogs and are never quite sure whether they’re bounding over to lick me or bite my face off, so when I’m on a run and a dog is running straight at me in the opposite direction I have that cold sense of fear that it’s going to be the latter. So far no dog has chosen to attack me; they’ve always been called off by their owners at the last minute.  “Princess, come here Princess”, they call. Princess? Cerberus more like. 

So today there were no errant youths or hounds from hell waiting to throw me into the stagnant water. Mind you, it would be no great shakes if they did, I could have shown off my new ability to doggy paddle, oh yes. No, today I was harassed by a duck. 

Stop laughing.

You see I became an unwitting enemy of duck kind some years ago. I thought they’d forgiven me, understood that I was just an innocent bystander of sorts, I’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it would appear that they talk and news of ‘the incident’ has got around. I shall explain.

It was 2004. I was driving myself and the present Mrs Hayward to work. We lived in the town of Stamford, a lovely little town if you’re ever in the area, and I had just passed The George Hotel and was driving down the aptly named Water Street, just by the river. 

I had found this little shortcut out of town some months before and was particularly pleased with myself. I’d driven it many times without incident but on this one particular morning, about this time of year, our little green Rover 100 found itself crossing the descent path of a low flying duck. 

To be fair the first I knew of it was when I saw a duck’s arse land on the windscreen right in my eye line. To be clear the duck’s arse was attached to the duck but I hadn’t been awake long and it landed with quite a thud so the arse was about all I actually saw of it. 

I say landed, I suppose the correct term would be bounced. I squealed to a halt and looked in the mirrors but astoundingly the duck had managed to incorporate its encounter with our windscreen into an elaborate stunt and flew happily into the distance. It probably still laughs about it with all the other ducks to this day. “You should have seen their faces when I landed on their car, if I’d had a camera I’d have taken a photo. Another glass of Champagne? Don’t mind if I do”. The end.

If you’re an animal lover, here’s a picture of some kittens. Just look at these and I’ll see you next time.

Have they gone? Good. 

Now look, I’m an animal lover too but let’s be honest, this was not my fault. I can’t be held responsible for a duck falling from the heavens, and I did check it was OK by, er, looking in the mirrors, but really, truly, it was nowhere in sight. It’s possible that I may even have got out of the car and trawled the riverbank for confirmation that the unfortunate bird had been unruffled by the whole event. Equally I may not have done this, it was such a long time ago. Either way, the duck was nowhere to be seen so I assumed all was well and carried on my way. What I didn’t expect was what was to come in the following weeks.

It may have been an eerie coincidence that I lived in a road called Mallard Court at the time but suddenly and without warning a proliferation of ducks seemed to be appearing outside our house. I would be stood in the window washing up and they would sit outside, just staring at me. They’d lurk around the communal car park waiting for me to come out and get back into the death-mobile. In the middle of the night, when all was silent, I would suddenly hear a lone ‘quack’ outside my bedroom window. They seemed to want me to know they were there.

They never did anything; they just hung around in groups, staring at me in an accusatory manner like one of the gangs from ‘West Side Story’. Seriously, if they’d had fingers they’d have been clicking them as I passed.

I realised that they were there for one reason and one reason only, to remind me of my crime, and it worked. You’ve seen the advert where that bloke has run over a child and wherever he goes the child is there, in the bathroom, at work with him, in the pub, in the corner of the bedroom just before he turns the light out. My life is just like that, but instead of a child there's a duck. 

I tried to reason with them but they were having none of it. They just quietly quacked disapprovingly amongst themselves. I liked Stamford but I was glad when we decided to move to Bourne as I would be leaving the duck gang behind me. ‘They wouldn’t dare come to Bourne’, I thought. Bourne had a duck-based reputation. This may be a rumour but I’d heard that one of the local Chinese restaurants had, many years ago, taken advantage of the local duck population when they ran out of supplies. As I say, this may of course be just a rumour. Please don’t sue me.

So the duck menace was over, or so I thought. That was until the other day when I was outside in the garden watching the grass grow. No, really I was, I’m so impressed that chucking a bit of grass seed down has actually worked as we now have the promised green hue of a burgeoning lawn. I was so thrilled that we’d actually managed to grow something that nothing could bring me down, until I heard a nearby ‘quack’. 

I looked around and couldn’t see any sign of where it had come from, and then I looked up. Sat on the roof of the neighbour’s house, staring down at me with that familiar haunting glare, were two ducks. They’d found me, after all these years. I tell you, if they’d put a duck on the trail of Osama Bin Laden we’d have had that sorry business sorted out years ago.

I scurried indoors and hid in our bedroom. After a while of cowering under the duvet I dared to peep out of the curtains and was relieved to see that they had gone. I reasoned that these must be different ducks and that it was all just a coincidence. Until this evening.

So, as I said, I was on my way back from Tesco, and was merrily wandering down the footpath when there was a sudden rustling from the bushes to my right which quickly grew into a much louder commotion. Expecting a wild boar or seven foot high attacker to emerge, such was the noise, I held up my watering can in defence, only for a duck to fly at speed out from the bushes, just inches from my face. 

I am not afraid to say I used some choice language such was the shock. The duck screamed down the length of the stream (or dyke, take your pick) and then doubled back and came round for a victory flight. For some reason I shook my fist at it. Further down the path I encountered a gaggle of ducks in the water who were quacking loudly, as if they were laughing at me. I was annoyed and found myself shouting at them. “Yeah?”, I said, “yeah? You’ll have to try harder than that”. 

On reflection, to the casual observer, I must have looked like a madman, one of those ‘local characters’ you hear about, howling at the moon and bellowing at shadows. 

I don’t know what to make of this. I guess I have to live with the fact that the ducks are back and this time they mean business. I will try to settle this dispute but don’t be surprised if you hear that they have ambushed me again as I fear these ASBO ducks have one aim. They mean to kill me.

I shall be on my guard.

In at the Deep End

I thought it was time that I posted again, lest you considered me dead via drowning, my soggy and spluttering soul forever traversing the water flume of eternity. No, against all odds I survived lesson number one, which came as quite a surprise.

There are not sufficient words available to me in the English language to explain how arse-clenchingly terrified I was as I approached the bland and functional façade of Bourne Leisure Centre, its primary coloured doors acting as the gateway to a watery hell, however I knew that I had to do it. I’d told too many people that I’m going to learn to swim, not least yourselves, so I couldn’t back away now.

I approached the reception desk with the vain hope that the instructors had been cast down with the pox and the lesson had been cancelled so I could write a whimsical “well, I tried but fate was against me” kind of post, but no, they were ready and waiting for me. 

I was pointed towards the changing rooms which I suspected to house all manner of sights, predominantly half naked men flicking their towels at each other. Well that’s what was happening the last time I went to a municipal baths but, to be fair, that was 1981 and everyone in the room including myself was aged no more than 7 years old. 

So I decided to make the best of it, adopted an ‘act as if you own the place’ attitude and swung the door of the changing room open with a breezy confidence. There was no-one there. The pool is closed whilst adult swimming lessons are on so I had the place to myself.

I swung into action and poured myself into my tight shorts, stuck the goggles on my head and went to secure my clothes in the locker. As I strode majestically across the changing room, feeling like I was Mr Universe 2011, the changing room door opened and an old bearded man appeared. He stared at me for a second, presumably eyeing up the six pack I don’t have, and he wandered into a cubicle to change into his own swimming togs. 

Feeling slightly less comfortable about parading around in what is essentially swimming pants I locked myself in a cubicle for a bit to regain my all too brief confidence. I heard the old man leave his cubicle and then I heard the sound of a shower running. Eventually, when all was quiet, I emerged and crept out into the pool area feeling ever so slightly self-conscious. 

A few kids were finishing their lessons and ran past me hooting at each other. The old man was sat nearby. He smiled at me and introduced himself as Geoff. He’d been to these lessons before and seemed to be back because he liked the company. I pointed out that I was an absolute beginner and he told me how he was taught not to be scared of putting his head under water by a (presumably) female instructor many years ago who decided the best way to help alleviate his fear was to kiss him under water the first time he did so. I guessed this was an unorthodox method and not one that would be applied here, so I just smiled and made some positive noises back as if we were two old friends in a bar and not two complete semi-naked strangers. 

Eventually I met the instructors, Hazel and Louise, who seemed excited about a newbie joining their ranks. My name was taken and I was encouraged to get into the water. This took me by surprise. I was hoping that there would be a brief interlude where I would be coaxed into the water gradually. By now however the cast of ‘Cocoon’ had arrived and were gradually submerging into the deep like elderly mermaids. If I had been worried about what people would think of my tight shorts I had no need to worry as my fellow learners most probably had cataracts and couldn’t see me. 

OK, they weren’t that old, there were two older ladies who couldn’t swim, one younger woman who said she couldn’t but she could, another middle aged woman that could swim very well, and Geoff, who by now was wearing bright blue flippers.

I can’t remember much about the hour but all I can say is, thanks to the patience of Louise who stuck with me for most of the lesson, by the end of it I was a distance out from the edge of the pool and pushing myself towards it with legs off the floor and kicking. I have no idea how I did this given my absolutely genuine fear of being out of my depth (which to me is anything above waist height). I even put my head under the water and blew bubbles. There was no kissing however, which is surely right and proper in a public swimming pool.

I can’t say I’ve lost the fear. I was just doing a good job of hiding it. Hazel told me, I suspect as a piece of motivational speak, that the bravest thing I did was walk through the door that day. I disagree. I was always going to walk through that door as I’d spent £85 on lessons. The bravest thing I’d done was appear in a public place with those swimming trunks on. However, rather than draw anyone’s attention to them any more than necessary I just agreed with her.

After I got back to the changing room and had a quick shower (alone I hasten to add) I encountered Geoff talking to another old codger who had appeared from somewhere. We briefly chatted and they were very encouraging.

Geoff didn’t learn to swim until he was 65 and the other chap when he was 57. This was actually good to know and made me feel quite positive about my first tentative efforts. 

Geoff said that next week they would be getting the weighted hoop out and he’d be diving down to collect it from the bottom of the pool. He was serious about this bizarre sounding activity and suggested that I could try it out if I liked. I’m not sure if I trust Geoff. He might go in for a snog whilst we were both under water and, with my limited swimming skills and natural sinking capabilities, I’d be powerless to stop him.

I always suspected that I might die over the next 15 weeks of lessons, but not quite like that.

That Sinking Feeling

I write this post today to say goodbye. Au revoir. Auf wiedersehen. For tonight I will die a terrible death that I have foreseen for many months now. Ever since I thought it would be a marvellous idea to motivate myself by posting about it on here I have known that the day will come when my limp pale body sinks lifeless to the bottom of the swimming pool at Bourne Leisure Centre after an overconfident attempt at the breast stroke.  Not so much running before I can walk, more swimming before I can float.

This may sound a tad overdramatic but I am taut with fear at the prospect of my first swimming lesson. It’s all come round so quickly as well. I only popped in today to put my name down thinking that lessons wouldn’t start until next week at the earliest, but no, they start this very evening at 7pm. 

I’ve paid for my 15 lessons up front so if I contemplate chickening out now I will be losing money, and I don’t like losing money. I gained and lost £1 at the weekend when the present Mrs Hayward and I visited Homebase. 

I say gained, I found an abandoned trolley in the car park and was delighted to see that it was one of those you stick £1 into. I felt so smug all the way round the store knowing I was going to get a little bonus at the end of my shopping trip. Then, while I was loading our purchases into the back of the car, Mrs Hayward helpfully returned the trolley herself. I know what you’re thinking, but no.

I watched in vain as she returned it to its correct place with the other trolleys but didn’t connect the little dongle. I started to wave frantically but my hopeless attempts at semaphore were met with a confused look and she just came back to the car to see what I was flapping about. I looked beyond her to see some other chap come along and take the aforementioned bonus trolley and my £1 gain was immediately lost. 

Mrs Hayward couldn’t see what I was upset about as I sulked all the way home. Her opinion was that it wasn’t my money anyway but that wasn’t really the point. I was just hoping that I hadn’t missed out after all and someone had rammed a foreign coin or a bottle top in the slot so that this other chap didn’t have a small windfall either. Knowing my luck he claimed the £1, bought a lottery ticket and won the jackpot, the swine. But I digress, anything to take my mind off my imminent demise. 

As well as drowning today I’m also worried about the dress code at the pool. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind, I would have just dug my trunks out of the drawer, an attractive blue pair with ‘Arena’ (that well-known sports brand) emblazoned across them. However I went into a sports shop today to buy a pair of goggles. Someone I know suggested they would be a good idea so that I don’t get water in my eyes while I’m gasping for breath at the bottom of the pool. Well she didn’t put it quite like that, she was suggesting some exercise where I put my head under water to see how long I could stay alive. This is supposed to help with my confidence but I’m not at all convinced.

So whilst I was in the sports shop I took a look at the array of swimming trunks for men and saw that they range from proper shorts you’d wear down the park to speedos, which you wouldn’t. This has made me paranoid about my own trunks. I came home and tried them on and, to my relief, they fit perfectly. However they are, well, not very long in the leg shall we say. 

They also don’t leave a lot to the imagination. I’m either going to be very popular with the ladies or I’ll scare the living daylights out of them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to boast here by any means, it’s just that these trunks accentuate what little I have.  

Oh well, at least it’ll be a talking point for the paramedics when they dredge my sorry corpse out of the pool later this evening. 

If I do survive (and this will be mostly down to me clinging for dear life onto the edge of the pool) I will let you know how I got on. 

If I don’t make it then I leave all my possessions to the present Mrs Hayward, including my Doctor Who collection which she must ensure goes to a good home. 

Just to clarify though, a good home is not a charity shop, on a bonfire, or in a skip.

Bottoms up!

White Van Man

There are some things that I should just accept that I either can’t do or don’t have the patience to do. Gardening may well be one of these things. If you read my last post you will know that this weekend we embarked upon an exercise to rid our weed ridden garden that looks like it may have originally been designed to be a patio and to replace it (eventually) with lush grass. 

To be honest we are well on our way to doing this. The slabs are up, the top soil is down, the fertiliser is in and, just for good measure the trailing ivy that is slowly toppling the dividing wall between us and our neighbours has been dramatically trimmed.

How much I contributed to this is not entirely clear but I know that my talents may not extend to raking in top soil. I could see by the look on the present Mrs Hayward’s face yesterday morning that I may not have been doing a very good job. I was reminded of the look on her face when she witnessed my attempts at painting the banister on the stairs in white gloss a few years ago.

Actually that face was slightly angrier as she felt my attempts at gloss painting weren’t entirely the neatest and that I was applying it in a random and haphazard manner more reminiscent of Rolf Harris. I didn’t have to ask whether she “could see what is it is yet” as with her own eyes she could see that it was a poorly painted streaky banister.  My use of matt paint was marginally better but in a good light you could say that it was a little, well, patchy. Like all great artists I like to show my style in the elegant brush strokes and textures. It turns out that all Mrs Hayward required was a nice evenly painted wall rather than a Jackson Pollock tribute.
So my gardening efforts were much the same. What I can do though, I do well. If you need something lifted then I’m your man. If you need something driven somewhere and lifted in or out of the back of the car, I’m in my element. I really should have been a white van man and if you’ve seen my flamboyant driving style I’m sure you’d agree.

So lugging heavy slabs around and driving to Homebase for bags of top soil are well within my abilities. The delicate art of applying and raking over the soil, perhaps not.

It’s therefore a surprise that we are in a position to be able to add the grass seed next week and then, apart from applying regular water we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour. I am not a particularly religious man despite being strangely lured by the sound of the church bells chiming on Sunday morning (which never came to anything as they strangely disapprove of people turning up at the church doors in just an old t-shirt and some worn through boxer shorts. Talk about Christian spirit) but I shall be praying to whatever all-knowing deity chooses to listen to my pleas for little green shoots to appear.

It doesn’t seem like a good time to be growing grass from seed due to the surprisingly ‘summer of 1976’ conditions we have been experiencing but I have to remember that this is Britain, and an absolute downpour is never too far away. 
So with all this in mind I have next weekend to look forward to. I don’t mean the Royal Wedding, that will pass me by with a pleasing sense of ‘don’t give a damn’. I’m still trying to find the perfect activity whilst Bill and Katy tie the knot. Back in 1997, whilst the world was sobbing in front of their TV sets as Elton John warbled in Westminster Abbey I drove to Chichester to collect my best mate’s girlfriend and her pet rat.  It was a great time to do this as the roads were empty and I’m hoping for the same on Friday. Well, I’m not expecting to be transporting vermin this time but a trip out might be in order.

No, the real reason this coming weekend is exciting is because on Saturday I actually get to drive a white van and lift many things. I shall be in white van man heaven.

So, if you need anything large or heavy picking up and moved somewhere just let me know. I’ll turn up in an in a grubby t-shirt and jeans, the music playing too loud and I’ll park in the middle of the road with my hazard lights on just like all good white van men. However If you want someone to landscape your garden or paint your walls however, call an expert.