I'd been putting it off for a number of decades. But in a reckless moment recently I decided that, finally, I was going to learn to swim. Up to then, swimming hadn't been a priority. The way I saw it, when you lived in Ireland you were wet enough already. Plus, it had taken millions of years for life to evolve out of the ocean and this organism, for one, was in no hurry to go back in.
If the rumours about the Greenhouse Effect were correct - a Mediterranean climate in the parts of Ireland still above sea level in 2020 or whenever - there'd be plenty of time (and opportunity) for swimming then, I thought.
The Olympic Games came and went, bringing images of god-like Australians with size-17 feet and suntans from Bondi Beach. But the more enduring image of swimmers was of mad-like Dubliners with size-17 ankles queuing in the rain for the annual Liffey Swim.
And then, a few weeks back, autumn happened and I felt the urge to learn something new. It's strange: the first cool breeze of September, the rustle of leaves on a footpath, and suddenly you find yourself enrolling for a 10-week course in finding yourself, or whatever, at the local tech. It's like a fever: I know two women who went out to sign up for golf lessons (the urge to play golf used to be a male thing, but with changes in diet and lifestyle it's increasingly a female problem too) and found the course fully booked, so they enrolled for wine-tasting classes instead!
For me, it was swimming. And on the basis of one lesson (which in journalism makes me an expert), I can report that there are good and bad things about learning to swim in your late 30s.
On the down-side, you will feel uncomfortable turning up at a pool for the first time wearing goggles and what is basically a pair of underpants with the logo of a major sports company on it (the logo is expensive, but you feel naked without it).
On the other hand, you can experience a lot of the discomfort in advance. Yes, a good tip for anyone preparing for swimming lessons is to try on the gear in front of a mirror at home. Another good thing, I've found, is to be very shortsighted without your glasses; so when you put on the goggles and look at your reflection, you could for all you know be Burt Lancaster on the beach in From Here to Eternity. And it's important to hold on to this (blurred) vision in the pool. Because learning to swim at a relatively advanced age is embarrassing. I haven't felt so uncomfortable outside of, say, dance classes, and at least I had my clothes on for them.
The situation is not helped by other bathers posing as beginners. I had never even been in a pool before, except on my 18th birthday when some friends thought it would be a good idea (and I had my clothes on for that, as well). But most of the other "beginners" appeared to master the art of floating upon mere contact with the water, and within minutes were doing side-to-side lengths of the pool. It's a little discouraging when the woman beside you turns into Flipper while you're still hanging on to the safety bar and trying to put your face in the water. In fact, when the advanced beginners were moved away, it turned out there was only me and one woman left. We lent each other moral support then, and within minutes, we had improved to the point of synchronised floundering.
I felt more at one with the pool after the first half hour or so, probably because by then I'd swallowed a fair bit of it. Ordinary pools don't have the anti-turbulence lanes you see in competitions, so you'll be taking a deep breath when one of the advanced beginners thrashes past you like a Mississippi steamboat, and you'll be left sucking backwash.
But despite shipping enough water to sink a small pleasurecraft, I was soon floating after a fashion, and ready for the next step. Unfortunately the next step involved standing several feet from the wall and, as the instructor humorously put it, "throwing yourself forward" into the water. If you kept your head down and pushed forward, she claimed, your feet would float up and you'd glide effortlessly towards the bar.
I spotted a big weakness in her story: namely that with your head in the water you couldn't see the bar. My fellow beginner spotted it too, happily; so the instructor relented and moved us to the ladders at either end, which have the advantage of going all the way to the bottom of the pool.
With the help of this I was soon gliding towards the steps, increasing the distance a little each time so that by the end of the class I was starting my glide almost a foot away from the ladder. The instructor was clearly impressed. "That's excellent - but now, I want you to do it from out there," she said, pointing to a spot which, I estimated, was at least the length of an Australian swimmer from the wall.
My heart sank, before the buoyancy of the pool lifted it again. But I pretended to follow her instructions: keeping my head down and my arms straight ahead and pushing. Then there was a brief, awful moment when I didn't know where I was. And then suddenly, gracefully, I hit the ladder with my nose.
"Now, wasn't that a beautiful feeling?" said the instructor as I climbed out of the pool. Yeth, it wath, I had to agree, adjusting my nose. I was only hoping I could do it again next week, deliberately this time.
fmcnally@irishtimes.ie
