Swimming

Did you know that diving is the new smoking? It is! It's got to be bad for you... I've just took my lad for his swimming lesson and it's everywhere, as soon as you walk into the leisure centre  there's a warning sign up 'NO DIVING', I'm suprised there wasn't one in the changing rooms... Oh and that was another thing, i walked into the 'MENS' changing room to find women and girls everywhere, me and my boy turned round and walked back out to check the sign on the door, yup right room but someone obviously hadn't told them... what's going on? Anyhow, the pool is maybe 20 metres in length and plastered all over the back wall are 'NO DIVING' signs, 5 of them!

I'm sure in my day we used to dive didn't we? i mean i remember a few horror stories about Johnny who'd banged his head but i remember diving in on a regular basis, i think it was one of the highlights of swimming to practice how cool your dive was! When does a jump become a dive? When did a dive become an illegal maneuver? When did you need 5 bloody great signs to all say the same thing?

I'm pondering this, sat up in the sauna like higher echelons of the viewing gallery when i notice about 5 or 6 kids swimming by in their pyjamas doing a backstroke whilst holding an imaginary brick on their chests. Yeah, i know...! What ever happened to the big black rubber brick you used to have to dive, yes DIVE (!!!) to rescue for the lifesaver badge back in the day... I must have saved at least 6 or 7 bricks attaining my lifesavers' badge and where are they? They can't have all drowned surely?!! These kids today have to use air bricks! 'just hold your hands like this and imagine a brick'?  ahh, it's a shame, maybe they've been retired and there's fields of them somewhere overlooking a pond and shivering from the memory of the deep end! 

Where was I? Oh yeah, the 'NO DIVING' signs... everywhere... Didn't there used to be a bit of variety, 'No Running', 'No Shouting', 'Non swimmers not allowed beyond this point' to name a few. All gone now it seems... just 'NO DIVING!' everywhere...

And haven't the 'lifeguards' got a lot more miserable these days, i mean what is it they get trained in? How to blow a whistle in the most annoying way possible repeatedly? I mean really really annoyingly with little tweety whistling techniques designed to show their levels of concern! A little peepy one for minor indiscretions such as waving at your mum, an elongated screechy one for quite serious ones such as gently throwing your kid in the air in a playful manner and the one that really makes you want to shove that whistle right up their arse is the repeated high pitch shrill peep peep peep when you attempt a dive! 

It's not just the lifeguard staff though it's the counter staff that seem trained up in pedantry now... I remember a few months back i tried to take two of my kids swimming... ohh no, that was a no go situation from the off. 'You need two adults for two children' they say... well i managed to get the two of them up this morning, dress them, feed them, in fact i seem to remember that on our last holiday they were both (and don't call childline) in the pool at the same time without any parents... where was i? i was practicing my diving in the deep end of the big pool!!!