Swimming Pool Diaries

Went for a swim yesterday with my friend and neighbour Mark. Mark is expert in - amongst other things - knowing about good swimming pools. His wife (she's the one I wrote about always being surprised that I can do anything [ "YOU went swimming with my husband?"]) says she spends a lot of time on their holidays meekly following behind him as he marches into exclusive hotels demanding to be shown where the pool is with such confidence and determination that no-one even dares to ask if he is a resident or not. He could find a decent pool in the desert. (He is currently engaged in a vigorous - and I have no doubt eventually successful - campaign to get our local council to build a swimming pool in the park near where we live.)

I read somewhere that Tracey Emin was planning on producing a book of good pools around the world. My mate Mark could write that book in an hour, and can happily chat away about pools all day. ("No don't go there. It looks like the sort of pool where you would catch polio." "That's a good pool to go to at 11.30." "Have you been to Bucharest? There is a great open air pool there that you should go to." "If you are ever in Dallas.." etc etc. I love it. So much information about swimming pools.)

So no surprises really as I followed Mark into a public pool in Chelsea yesterday that we didn't have to pay and we had the pool to ourselves for three quarters of an hour - unheard of in London at lunchtime, which was when we were there. Mark's a good person to go swimming with, although he does wear a hat when he is swimming, and his swimming trunks are on the dodgy side of skimpy. He also has a special swimming towel which is about the size of a tea bag that was developed by NASA or something.

Mark really looks like a swimmer, all snake-hipped and lithe and eel-like. The sort of person who tuts at anyone else in the fast lane with him. I waddled around in an unmarked lane, as he ploughed up and down the fast lane like an Olympian. Good fun though, and I take some vague pleasure in the fact I did more lengths than he did, although he measures his swims in 'loops' = two lengths.

In and around our swim, Eel Man gave me some good advice about looking for work and also on blogging, so it was an ideal interlude in an otherwise unremarkable day. Today I am off to get some career advice from another friend who used to be a swimming instructor. I can feel a theme - or me offering to write Tracey Emin's book for her - coming on.