Swimming with Miss 12
Midway through the morning my better half quietly wandered into the study and asked if I would take Miss 12 swimming. She has her first rowing lesson at school next week, and was stressing out that she would fail the swimming test (in reality you cannot fail it – you are given abuoyancyaid if you're not confident in the water).
We ended up on the train an hour later, swimming bags slung over our shoulders. After a short walk from the station we arrived at the swimming pool where the session wasn't supposed to start for a little while, and discovered it already teaming with people. Miss 12 frowned at me, and at the pool, and cursed that she was missing pool time (you know, like a three hour session wasn't enough anyway?).
We lasted an hour and a half – mostly because my eyes were burning from the chlorine. I've never had problems before, but am now thinking I should buy goggles. I bought Miss 12 a pair on the way into the pool to hopefully help her confidence with swimming underwater (it worked). I had a quick go with them after an hour or so, and found to my surprise that suddenly I could see right across the pool underwater – and – oh my – legs and bums everywhere. I guess you get used to blurry glimpses of what might be a person you're about to crash into while doing front crawl, or swimming underwater – or at least I had. Goggles would stop that happening at all.
We had a list of things to go through during the session – swimming as far as she could, swimming underwater, and treading water. Three things came out of it; she needs more stamina, she needs to practice swimming underwater, and her dolphin kick is much better than mine (I'm guessing that's a function of her being 12 years old, and an order of magnitude more flexible than me).
Our final stop was the caf above the pool for hot chocolate and a candy bar.
“Thanks Dad”
“What for?”
“For bringing me”
I smiled.