I went swimming today. It was a beautifully sunny evening, the pool was just full, not too much, and everyone was swimming properly. They annoy me, the non-swimmer swimmers. Their splashing or slow sculling breaststrokes or hanging about disturb my swimmy flow. I like people round me to swim neat and speedy. Make me work to keep up with them. Make me admire their stroke. It might not be fair, but it is what it is.
I like that I can go faster as I warm up rather than succumbing to agonised exhaustion as I would if I tried to run.Swimming is the bomb. How I love it. And I'm considerably less wobbly than I was when I started again, which is nice. The only problem is it makes me violently starving afterwards. So I came home and ate dinner. And some things while dinner was getting ready... and then the family came home with pizza, and my resolve didn't hold. And the combination of hard swimming and too much carby goodness (or badness, rather) has made me so very very tired. Yaaawn. Oops. So that backfired a bit, but hopefully it did my muscles good.
Swimming in the sunlight is beautiful. Like swimming through light itself. Pushing under to touch the floor of the deep end and kicking back up again to go, all through the white light water that seems less dense than usual. Backstroke looking up at the blue sky and fluffy clouds through the skylight. On one lap I noticed the fire door was open. You could see trees, and the wall of someone's house. That was strange. Imagine looking out your bedroom window and into a swimming pool. Then I remembered the front windows all look on to a housing estate too. And behind that, the mountains. It's a strange perspective.
I used to, long ago, have a membership in the Glenview hotel, up on the hill in the Glen of the Downs. You'd swim towards the giant windows, towards that view. It was magic. In the sunlight, in the evening. One night my mother and I were there when there was lightening. But those days are gone, and now it's the community pool for me.
I put my face back in the water. Stick with the light and the water and sky.
2 comments:
Ah, exercise. It's the best thing in the world. Don't be too hard on yourself about the carbs. You did one thing right, and that's a great start. How is anyone meant to resist pizza anyway?
A beautiful piece, Jo. I like to think of you swimming.
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