I have taken up swimming.

 

When I was a child, Sunday nights were spent dreaming up imaginative ways to excuse myself from the next day's swimming lesson. First thing on a Monday, I'd be forced to don speedos (because trunks are apparently less aerodynamic) and flounder about in some water that was 80% chlorine, 20% children's urine.

I've never been much of a swimmer, I'd been awarded my 5 metre badge like all human children, but that essentially proves that I had the ability to float without drowning for ten seconds over a distance only five times the length of my tiny under-developed body.

Anyway, when I was 13, I could barely swim. And yet, the teachers at my school looked upon me; a short, slightly obese ginger boy and came to the conclusion that I needed to be more awkward. So, whilst all the other kids slipped in and out of the deep end like greased otters, I was asked to bob unpopularly in the shallows. Occasionally a teacher would come to check that I hadn't been sucked into the filter.

By the time I left that school, I was able to swim one length of front crawl (ingesting about a litre of heavily chlorinated water and children's urine in the process) and around two lengths of windmill-like backstroke.

So why have I taken up swimming? A good question, given my history of near drowning incidents, school-lesson humiliation and standing on a poisonous fish in the Channel Islands.

I dunno, I just quite like it now. After a sabbatical of six years, I took to the water again recently, in an attempt to get one of those bikini bodies that everyone's been going on about this year. Upon entering the pool (a pencil drop into the shallow end that got me ticked off by the person in a high-chair) I discovered that I'd been missing out. Swimming is awesome.

That said, the people you'll meet in the pool (not to talk to, but to awkwardly brush up against and see naked in the changing rooms) are varied, and can be slightly annoying, especially on a weekday. The holy grail is an empty pool, but more often than not, there are a number of hazards to bear in mind as shown in the diagram below.

To conclude today's pointless post on how I've recently started to do exercise, here is a list of the different types of swimming stroke:

Front crawl - The industry standard stroke, but swimmer will usually embibe quite a bit of water and children's urine.

Backstroke - My favourite, but also the most difficult to carry out in a crowded swimming pool. I've now whacked two people in the face due to backstroke, one of whom was under 5.

Butterfly - a type of insect.

Breast stroke - not to be confused with second base, breast stroke is the clear favourite of those that don't like getting their hair wet. If though, like me, you struggle to synchronise the arm and leg movements, you'll quickly sink to the bottom of the pool.