At the Public Baths

[Kim]

When I read that TG my immediate thought was " I didn't think Steve was of the alternatively oriented persuasion. "

Did you miss the whole thing with the one-footed ICE trike? 

[citoyen]

I always knew this whole 1YTT thing was just a cry for help.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Utter fuckwits in the pool today.

No slow lane, so all the slow lane swimmers were in the medium lane. None of them had the first clue about letting the faster people pass at the ends, one of them did front crawl like Godzilla wading through treacle while carrying buckets of lead, and one of them had no concept of this side of the lane for that way, that side of the lane for this way, choosing to swim up and down the middle of the lane, thereby ensuring that a) he inconvenienced everybody and b) there was no way to overtake the slower swimmers. And, numerous fuckwits in the open water section were amusing themselves by seeing how far they could swim underwater by pushing off from the edge, and invariably running out of air in the lane area, in front of lane swimmers (usually me or whoever was right in front of me). I switched to backstroke so I would have an excuse for crashing into them and being rude.

[ian]

My pool only has the one lane for lane swimmers, which kind of works, as it's half a pool wide and mostly not super-busy at dinner time (to annoy working people, all the OAP tend to go to the daybreak session and then clog up the showers while they discuss who's died recently and the many and various ailments they have been collecting).

Unless.

There's a couple of oldsters who appear during the day. Now I'm sure there's some mysterious force that forces them away from the edge of the lane. I believe it's carried by the zimmeron particle that will shortly be discovered in Cern. They can't help but be in the middle, moving slower than time itself, in a strangely accelerated welter of discoordinated limbs. Then there are the people who never look when they launch, which they do at exactly the moment you reach the end to make your turn. They don't look when they pull out of the car park either. These groups are not mutually exclusive.

Oh and let's not Forget The Woman Who Does Not Like To Be Splashed. She's complains to the lifeguard (who ain't no Hoff) periodically. It's a swimming pool. Known to be wet.

And and the short cycles, you overtake them, flip and there they are in front of your again like the bloody public pool albatross you can't get rid of, having for some unaccountable reason turned mid-length. How hard is it to lane swim? Just stay at the edges and let faster swimmers overtake in the middle and go first if you encounter them at the end.

Trained sharks are indeed the furture of swimming pool policing.

[caerau]

Oh i forgot in my last rant the one that REALLY annoyed me.


Look I've been gaining on you for seven lengths during which time I've basically come up to lap you.  So when I do actually overtake, don't SUDDENLY DECIDE IT'S A RACE. Snarl x7.  I may be going slightly faster than you but it's still bloody knackering to be forced into a race to reovertake AGAIN!  Snarl x7


I eventually went with a policy of swimming into the back of their legs with these people, to make the point.


Ooh the pent up rage, cycling is so much more pleasant generally.

[Mr Larrington]

Ooh the pent up rage, cycling is so much more pleasant generally.

I once encountered some gobbin who got very arsey and accused me of drafting him past South Tottenham station, when all I had done was use my l33t Dark Side plummeting 5k1llz off the North Face of Stamford Hill to go faster than his little legs could propel his gas-pipe road-racer-lookalike.  "I'm going to spit in your face" he announced, before spitting in my face.

So I threw him and his velocipede under a passing bendy-bus¹ outside Seven Sisters tube, and then had an ice cream.

1: This was a long time ago, when Mr K Leninspart was still in charge and dinosaurs roamed freely in Wood Green.

[ian]

In other pool news, the bad tats on display. It seems that everyone went out and got tattoos while I was asleep. OK, my opinions on tattoos are broadly negative, since they so often look like someone has been attacked with a leaky biro, probably by someone graphically expressing their anger at failing their art GCSE. OK, I can admit that something simple and well-done won't punch my sense of aesthetics in the face. I can sort of understand something grandiose and extravagant if well done. And I'm not going to argue with an Hell's Angel. My dad has the swords-through-skulls-with-snakes type, which at least were done by someone who could draw. But the pool seems to expose acres of flesh marked with random, half-hearted scrawls. Occasional letters (gothic scripts seem to be the thing, and don't get me going on the awful kerning, and I live in fear of seeing one in Comic Sans), random Chinese characters (probably meaning 'white devil monkey'), and animals that appear to have stepped out of those dreams you have if you eat too much cheese before bedtime. Is that a griffin or the weird offspring from when a lion loves a taxi, a love that really should have no name, and certainly no accompanying tattoo.

Even yesterday's guest receptionist was is in on the act. She was wearing clothes, as receptionists so often do, but as I glanced down over the counter to chirpily announce 'swimming please!' I noticed a wild animal. Now I wasn't merely trying to roll my eyes like marbles down her cleavage, but right there was a giant elephant emerging from her top. Pretty extravagantly done. I'm not sure who wakes up one morning and decides they'd like an elephant sat right on their chest, ready to emerge as necessary from their décolletage. I suppose you'd really need to like elephants. Dumbo never emerged from a lady's top. I'm sure I would have remembered that.

[Mr Larrington]

ian, you are a Bad Man and there is nasally-propelled Brown Drink all over my fondleslab.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I'm not sure who wakes up one morning and decides they'd like an elephant sat right on their chest, ready to emerge as necessary from their décolletage. I suppose you'd really need to like elephants. Dumbo never emerged from a lady's top. I'm sure I would have remembered that.

Was it a big top? 'Cause I'm sure Dumbo performed in the big top.

[ian]

I'm not sure who wakes up one morning and decides they'd like an elephant sat right on their chest, ready to emerge as necessary from their décolletage. I suppose you'd really need to like elephants. Dumbo never emerged from a lady's top. I'm sure I would have remembered that.

Was it a big top? 'Cause I'm sure Dumbo performed in the big top.

Good point, but she wasn't a big girl and the top was appropriate for her delicate stature, and in all respects she didn't look a likely owner for a giant elephant tattoo. I presume the remainder of the elephant was submerged beneath her top. I believe it's impolite to ask a lady about the extent of her elephant. She missed a trick, she could have got a reposing hippopotamus.

[LEE]

I learned some years ago that under no circumstances should someone who has spent over 40 years using slow but reasonably elegant front crawl and breast stroke attempt to do the butterfly when there are people watching. It was difficult for them to tell if I was getting fit or having one. 

Nobody of sound mind should ever attempt to do the Butterfly at all, ever. Certainly not while others are trying to have a relaxing swim.

It's a swimming stroke that has no benefits, it's the swimming equivalent of the 50km Walk.

[caerau]

Nonsense, done correctly it is awesomely fast.
 
My crowning glory in my days of daily lengths swimming was teaching myself to do efficient butterfly.


Granted it did start out as drowning people and almost myself but the tricks were (a) t'internet - really - I learned the technique from googling it and (b) doing it in the sea where one has more buoyancy.


Upon returning from a trip to Rhodes where I'd done it all holiday in the sea I could rapidly swim a length with butterfly.


It's far the best stroke for being a poseur.  Do a length of quick crawl and noone cares, flash past with some well done butterfly and you're the pool star.


Sadly for my own glory in the pool I used to do my lengths (Birmingham University pool) there was a guy with one leg who could do any stroke he liked  - including butterfly - so quickly I felt like I wasn't moving.  I did once suggest to him that he should tie a hand behind his back in addition so that I might have a chance of catching him. 


I should add - that if people are annoying you in the lane, there is NOTHING like kicking past them with some nice splashy butterfly stroke to wreak some revenge 

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

The only reason I'm trying to learn butterfly is for posing value.

Now I want a new tattoo, in comic sans.

[ian]

Back when I used to swim at the Oasis (outdoor pool in Holborn) there was a girl who didn't just swim epically fast, she'd cover a length in about three strokes and make it look absolutely effortless, while I'll be there floundering like someone had thrown a bin bag full of heavy spanners in the pool. I hated her. I think she was a dolphin in a Mission Impossible-style person mask. Dolphins, since they got all pally with the tuna fish, I don't trust.

I can do butterfly but I suspect the only person I'm impressing is myself.

[caerau]

My swimming came mostly to an end when I move to Cardiff and it became rather less convenient than to walk for 2 minutes across campus at Brum.


However I did persist for a while but found myself taught what swimming was really all about. The local pool is at Sophia Gardens and just happens to be where they train the welsh national swimming squad - at the same time as the lanes sessions in the morning.


Just wow.  Frightening and much put-in-place swimming was witnessed.

[caerau]

The only reason I'm trying to learn butterfly is for posing value.

If you're serious (I hope you are  ) - forget the arms - it's all about moving your body as a whale or dolphin swims - add the arms when you can do a length  in what amounts to swimming as if you're doing the old caterpillar break-dance manouever 


Most people - and I include my uneducated former self - just wildly swing their arms and don't realise the mobility is largely generated from the dolphin kick.

[red marley]

There's a regular at my local pool who spends 10 minutes doing stretching exercises on the poolside before starting his swim with two lengths of underwater porpoising before doing almost silent splashless butterfly for the next half hour. Beautiful, fast and efficient.

And a thought for the day just for Ian

(click to show/hide)

[ian]

Hmm, Comic Sans perpetually inked into your flesh, it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which that would seem a good idea. At least The Girl Who Likes Elephants has a very impressively drawn elephant, at least as far as I could tell (you can only stare at a woman's chest for so long before discretion really should come tap you on the shoulder and remind you Heaven is up thataway and Jesus and his entire choir of Cherubic Kittens don't like what you are doing).

My dad doesn't remember getting most of his tattoos but at least you can't go wrong with the good old skull on a dagger with snakes in attendance meme. And he did have a motorbike and a best friend who was a world superbigmotorbike champion thing who used to scare me shitless as child by zooming me around Castle Donington race track at something close to Mach 3. You can probably understand why I ride a bicycle and have no tattoos.

At my last pool, there used to be old chap with a permatan, who (and you have to picture this, so concentrate):

(a) wore a posing pouch. I never thought I'd ever have cause to write the words 'posing pouch' so there you go.

(b) and it was leopard print (or occasionally gold) posing pouch (come on people, visualize)

(c) enough chunky jewellery to put a pocket battleship in Davy Jones' locker

(d) and would spend probably 20 minutes stretching, swim a length, then get out and stretch some more, leaning back and swivelling his barely restrained love turret across the pool like he was looking for a target

(e) and when I say old, let's say he was cruising the chilly waters far to the north of seventy

I suppose I had to admire his chutzpah. Yes, his chutzpah. The rest I could pass on. Maybe it pepped up the older ladies.

[HTFB]

Sadly for my own glory in the pool I used to do my lengths (Birmingham University pool) there was a guy with one leg who could do any stroke he liked  - including butterfly - so quickly I felt like I wasn't moving.  I did once suggest to him that he should tie a hand behind his back in addition so that I might have a chance of catching him. 

I should add - that if people are annoying you in the lane, there is NOTHING like kicking past them with some nice splashy butterfly stroke to wreak some revenge 

We have a chap with one leg and a wide-reaching backstroke technique, who is a bit hard to pass within a lane but otherwise blameless. Apart from him, there's every reason to be tough on backstroke and tough on the causes of breaststroke.

[geraldc]

I'm quite lucky with my pool. There's good lane discipline. There's rarely more than 2 people per lane.

I don't tend to go in the fast lane unless I'm doing front crawl. If I'm doing the breast stroke in the medium lane, I will try and race people who have inefficient crawls in the fast lane.

[essexian]

Lane discipline at Cannock pool is very good and you quickly get told to move lane or get to the left if you stray out off of a straight line. Stafford pool however is quite different kettle of fish and one I struggle with having quite poor vision without my glasses on: people just go where they want without a care in the world. I suppose looking a bit like one of the "Mitchells" from Eastenders helps if people get stroppy when I "have a word"....shame it's Peggy however.

Oh and the name Public Baths always takes me back to about 1970 when Walthamstow New Baths opened and they actually had a section of baths the public could use.... back then we didn't have an indoor loo let alone a bath, so we were made to have a bath there once a month whether we needed it or not. 

[L CC]

My dad always refers to it as 'the baths' which is slightly disconcerting when really you're talking about a leisure centre where you'd struggle to actually swim.

Way back when as a teenage dole wallah I went swimming to the pool very regularly as The Cooncil made it free for us. And it is where I washed. More often than monthly though, essexian!

[fuzzy]

In my world swimming is reserved for The Sea, undertaken by folk wearing, at the least, a cossie, fins, a mask and snorkel. Wetsuits/ drysuits, scuba gear etc. are all acceptable.

Swimming otherwise than above is a self preservation technique.

As a hobby/ pastime/ fing wot you do to get fit, swimming is down there with collecting the dead skin from the feet of chronic athletes foot sufferers or doing dental hygiene on folk that haven't seen the inside of a dental practice since before the big bang and have enough plaque on their teeth to coat the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

[caerau]

I found it very enjoyable,  very relaxing and by far the best method for keeping fit I've ever done* - way better than cycling as it's so all-body round and utterly injury free - I think I got cramp once.


Admittedly the views aren't as interesting as in cycling.









*at first at least - gah the frustration with doing it everyday got to me a bit/lot in the end but I never stopped until I left the city

[HTFB]

I struggle with having quite poor vision without my glasses on:

Prescription swimming goggles are absolutely the best bit of exercise technology since the Brooks saddle. They make the most astonishing difference. You can see people before they swim head-on into you! You can see the far wall before you swim into it! You know where the lifeguards are! You can see how fast people are moving before picking your lane! You can avoid treading in small patches of undefined yuck between the changing room and the poolside!

Unless you spend hundreds the lenses only correct long or short sight, not any astigmatic component, but this is perfectly good enough even with my extravagant astigmatism. My local opticians looked at my last prescription and ordered in each goggle-eye separately (Boots or Dollond and Aitcheson had ready-made pairs in packets, but you'd have had to buy two to mix and match). They cost me £35, which since purchase is about 20p/swim and inexpressible value.

I got them and have never looked back because there's never anybody in my lane who can swim faster than me even if I have to move into the slow lane to achieve it.