Not Drowning

When I am not writing househusbandnot or filling out job applications or generally trying to figure out what to do next, I do a lot of swimming. (As the more loyal of you readers out there will remember, I achieved a long-held ambition the other day by swimming two miles in one session.)

I swim at a very swish club which is part of a hotel in central London. (househusbandnot prospective stalker to self: "He is giving me details. He wants me to follow him.") Well kinda swish. Like our flat, there is always something broken there. On good days it is just a couple of broken showers. On bad days it is the heating in the swimming pool, when braver people than me brace themselves for a reproductive organ freezomatic experience that would get them into the boys or girls club in most Innuit initiation ceremonies. (I've been thinking about Innuits a lot. It is as a result of watching that bloke from the TV programme Tribe who is now trying to get to the North Pole in Scott of the Antarctic's original seal-skin pants. If you are not watching this programme on Sunday evenings 1) you should 2) the huskies are winning so far.)

Anyway, when the heating is working, the pool is great, and if I time it right it is only me and that actor who played Neil in The Young Ones pottering around in a 25 metre pool with all the space we need to engage in our swimming regimes. Sometimes there are people who are staying in the hotel, but mostly it is just me, Neil and maybe a few gay dudes doing our thing.

I think swimming is the way forward. After a decent swim I feel I could take on the world, walk to the North Pole with or without fur pants, breathe air as God designed us to breathe it, and fly. Not that I was always a big swim fan (Swim Fan is a really badly excellent movie by the way.) I didn't learn until I was about nine years old, and then for reasons I never worked out I had to learn in pyjamas.

If I ever manage people again, I am going to make them go and swim at least three times a week. Not in a noncey way so that I can check out what they look like in wet pyjamas or anything. Just so they are fired up for a day's work, having had some space in their lives over and above the commute crush, the queue in Pret A Manger for a hummous wrap, and trying to get past the head of HR in the office kitchen while she prepares her chicken and chive slimasoup. (I would never employ a head of HR at househusbandnot inc. I'd just get my staff to do some sort of Innuit loyalty blood-letting ritual. Heads of HR are really weird. They look like they live in tree houses. )

I do have a few reservations about swimming pools and people who frequent them though:

1) They are monstrously cruisey. (I can only speak for the men's changing rooms here, but looking at some of the bull dykes who crash up and down the swimming lanes, I am assuming that it is the same peak-a-boo deal in the women's changing room. What is it about swimming and gay people? I guess it's just a naked thing.)
2) That really really old man who swims so slowly that you think he is actually suspended in a Damien Hirst sculpture.
3) That bloke who thinks it is acceptable for his eight year old son to swim in the lengths lanes with the same regard for us serious swimmers as an amphetamined mackerel.
4) Swimming hats. Hair on plastic just doesn't work for me, even as a spectator sport.
5) That really posh girl who does one length of crawl followed by one length of breast stroke and then a length of backstroke, all with total disregard for other people in the pool. I think she thinks she is back in Princess Margaret's pool in the West Indies or something.

I don't know what they would say about me. Oh, that fat bloke who screams "Yeah" every time he completes a length. But, hey I love it. Like management, it would be perfect if it wasn't for the (*&(*Ing people.