Risking My Life

I have a love-hate relationship with water.  I love it, in that without water I'd die of dehydration, and hate it in that I've never learned to swim.

I've always vaguely thought that I ought to learn how to swim, but to be honest it's never been a priority.  However, recently I've encountered swimming pools, on more than one occasion. (And by that I mean two occasions)

The first was as part of a spa day that I and my wife enjoyed as an anniversary present.  After a surprisingly pleasant facial, and an absolutely agonising back massage - next time I'm going to get a pedicure instead - we hit the pool, and I spent an hour slowly walking up and down the pool, occasionally attempting to hold on to the side and lift my body into a floating position.

The second time was last Sunday at a birthday party held for one of my son's school friends - I was quite impressed of the choice of a swimming pool rather than a soft play centre (I have long standing issues with soft play centres, as can be read in past posts here and here), and being a childrens pool it was reasonably shallow, and foolishly I thought that I could use the pool as an opportunity to practice my swimming skills.

After slipping and falling over, getting wholeheartedly submerged, and thinking for a moment "I'm actually going to drown in three feet of water, " I somehow successfully found my footing and rose to my feet, water gushing out of my nose and ears as my lungs attempted to reestablish the normal pattern of breathing air.

My wife, to be quite honest, looked wholly unimpressed by the way that I had managed to save my own life, and if I hadn't known better was possibly even tempted to point out that the water was so low that there was every chance that I could have just drank it.  I argued that I had been let down by the floating noodle that I was clutching on to for dear life, it's supposed to be something that kids can grab hold of and float with, and yet it seems totally unable to support my well-built figure.

Sadly my son absolutely loves being in swimming pools and so I'm returning to the same pool in a couple of weeks.  Not to worry though, there's a shop that rents out scuba gear so I'll be prepared for the depths.  Plus I've been reading Tim's advice on avoiding shark attacks.

Finally, my wife's YouTube channel has received some positive attention - she's started up a flosstube channel (cross stitching), and is apparently reasonably good at it, looking at her views and subscribers - go check it out :)