Relaxing - alone

"It's the end of the lane" gasped a fellow swimmer at my health club.

The health club is situated opposite the county hospital, and I think a lot of the patients are prescribed membership. Whatever - a huge number of them, considering it calls itself a 'health club' - look very unhealthy indeed to me. There seems to be a disportionate number of elderly, overweight, handicapped, hunchbacked and single limbed members, compared with the general population. And that doesn't count the tattooed brigade with their Number 1s. Especially considering it costs £54 a month, so it's not representative of the world at large. Whatever - it's hardly the Hurlingham darling.

On Mondays and Fridays at 10 o'clock they hold an hour's aquarobics session, loud music blaring out of a too-small speaker, so that you can't really tell what each tune is. The disadvantage of these is that the lifeguards block off one of the two lanes provided for bone fide members of the club who actually swim lengths, leaving us all with only one lane to pound up and down. Or in my case, paddle along in a leisurely manner, getting in everyone's way, usually kicking a couple of people in the head as I go.

If you're lucky, the other swimmers are female, moving gracefully through the water without splashing. It's the men who show off, going as fast as they can making waves and getting water in the mouths and eyes of people trying to quietly pootle along minding their own business. One day I will say to one of them "Ever thought of swimming lessons, mate?"  It's locally referred to a 'Lane Rage'.

 But the upside of the acquarobics is that I get out of the pool feeling thin and young. You can see that all this splashing around to music clearly doesn't work. In my three years of membership all the ladies doing it still look the same. (There aren't any men - I expect they are all out earning enough to pay for their wives' health club membership.)

I get out after my thirty lengths and walk slowly around the pool to the jacuzzi, to demonstrate to them that, although I cannot boast anything like a perfect body, proper swimming is a considerably more effective and efficient means of maintaining some degree of fitness. Then I spend ten minutes in the warm bubbles, feeling smug and expounding my theories to the other people enjoying their special moment of relaxation.

It's not long before I get the whole jacuzzi all to myself.