In the swim

For a while I was considering changing this blog's title to 'I failed to go swimming' because that is how most of my days begin. I'm full of good intentions to go, but recently more often than not, I don't. But today I had a great swim, which is even more surprising considering I went out last night and still managed to go to the pool at 8.15. I am growing more sensible it seems.

I swim at the local authority pool, which is best described as functional - its near, cheap and does lane swimming on mornings. The facilities are basic, cleanliness sometimes remiss and the staff often surly. But it is one of a few (if not the only) remaining Victorian 'public baths' remaining in London so there isn't much they can do with it, short of knocking it down and starting again (which is threatened every couple of years). The pool also has a different kind of heritage - it is the pool in The Day Today's spoof documentary about a swimming pool - this might be the reason its been saved from the bulldozers.

Besides the poor changing rooms and feeble showers, the pool has posed a new problem recently. The poolside clock has broken. It wasn't working one day, was working on my next visit, broken the time after, cruelly ripped from the wall by last weekend, leaving a sad clock-shaped hole in the tiles.

Unfortunately I seem to possess no natural sense of time which makes it very difficult to tell how much exercise I've done. I thought about counting lengths but the swimming relaxes me so much I lose track. Today I thought the problem was solved - someone else asked the pool attendent what time it was. 'Good idea' I thought 'Now I'll know how long I've been swimming' . It was only when he said the time, I realised I had no idea what time it was when I got in.

I eventually got out when I realised a few people had been and gone from my lane. I estimated I had been done ten more minutes after the timecheck, but when I looked at my watch in the changing cubicle, it had actually been 25 minutes, which at least proved I was right about uselessness with time.

This same unawareness of the passage of time is probably to blame for my disbelief that I will 32 next week, when it only seems like a year or so since I graduated. Undoubtely there will be more posts about the imminient birthday as it looms closer.