Monday Night Bliss

I was going to write a blog about my first attempt at Zumba last week but other than looking like I was doing ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ and flapping like a chicken at the same time as well as doing a very good job of looking like a demented Phil Mitchell by the second; I have nothing more to add. However, I decided to go for a swim this evening and that is a different story. . .   

Firstly it was a Monday. Monday’s are blah for want of a better word.

·         Tired from lack of sleep on a Sunday night due to a lay in Sunday morning.

·         Tired due to laying awake, worrying about not being able to get up at all Monday morning. 

·          Sore feet due to being on them all day.

·         And Monday! The worst day of anyone’s the week for no other reason than it being Monday.  

But I was convinced it was a good idea by Sis and it seemed better than the gym. Monday’s in the gym is ridiculously busy and with busy comes the horrid, stale smell of sweat. Yuk. So swimming it is. I just have to dig out swim suit from the depths of the wardrobe, last seen having fun and frolics on a Cornish beach several months ago.  Check that I can get away without waxing as run out of strips until payday which isn’t funny considering the weather we’ve had recently and I have legs like a rugby player and make sure I don’t attack the chocolate spread jar with a spoon before a swim because being tired and hungry is not a good combination but a combination that requires chocolate to function. 

So we trundle off and on arrival, we’re met by screams of delight from a billion kids in the pool.  By the way, that’s not screams of delight for us. Ok, so it’s open swim and not lanes. I can deal with that. It’s just gone 6 and surely these kids will be leaving for their tea? With this in mind we continue with our faith intact that the great British parent still has tea at tea time and should be vacating the pool.  No such luck as we zigzag our way down the pool; a length turning into 2 as we dodge balls, people jumping in and generally having a jolly good time because that’s what open swim is all about and we have to accept that. 

But as we’re swimming, we overhear that the local Cubs troop have just arrived for a swim. Fantastic!! Can this get any worse?

Well yes it does. The problem is men! Yes men! Now I know why I like the ‘Women Only’ session.  Like a torpedo, the men plough through the water with complete disregard to anything in their way. At warp speed, they home in on their target; the other end of the pool and do not stop until their destination is reached. If you don’t move quickly enough, you’re likely to end up clobbered like a battered piece of fish. Instead, you do move out of their way because your life depends on it, only to be met with a mouthful of water. You’re left spluttering and choking as you try to reach the other end of the pool only to go through it all over again. But then you reach the other end and it stinks like a urinal and you’re drinking that water! Yuk! Yuk and triple gazillion yuk!

You know there probably is the odd accident in the pool but you ignore it as if you did think about it, you’d never go swimming again unless you had breathing apparatus or jabs for every disease known to man and beast so you end up looking like a pin cushion. But the smell from the toilets is so pungent that all you can think about is the water you have just been forced to drink by the Duncan Goodhew wannabes.

 And then before you’ve even caught your breath from all the spluttering, you’re swimming back to get away from the smell only to be met by the man who thinks he’s at the beach as he plays volley ball and completely ignores you swimming by when his ball hits you on the head, of which he thinks is hilarious by the laughter that follows. Yes I’m sure it’s very funny. Be funnier if I had a pin to pierce said ball and deflate his ego.

Finally, after forty minutes of swimming, drinking gallons of water (hopefully nothing extra added) and dodging the budgie smuggling torpedoes, we decide to call it a night. And as we’re getting changed, it seems everyone has the same idea! And the pool is practically empty.

So the moral of the Monday night swim is really to have a serious case of CBA and chill out watching TV which is what Monday nights are made for.  . .well they were when RPJ was on in Whitechapel . . .