swimming lessons

[old git]

Who remembers those bags you bought from school for swimming.Can remember a few colours bright orange,green,red and possible blue.They had a black pic on them,but the biggest memory was the smell....they stunk of the strongest rubber/plastic you can think of

[Heather74]

Re: swimming bags

Count yourself lucky you didn't have to shove all your hair up in to a skin tight cap that stank the same way

[Marine Boy]

Re: swimming bags

Oh yes! The bags, the caps, and I think even the arm bands, all had that nasty rubbery smell.

(Probably for another thread, but I will never forget the time, aged about 8 or 9, that I removed all my clothes, reached into my swim-bag, only to discover there were no trunks inside. I had to have 'borrowed' ones. Very unpleasent.)

[Heather74]

Re: swimming bags

Oh no, not the dreaded "help yourself to one out of the locker" :cry: I'll never forget I had to put one on that was a mile to big and as I was swimming the straps kept slipping down my arm, 13 years old and a male instructor I was gutted.

And just out of interested... Who the hell was the kid who bit a chunk out of all the polystyrene floats surely to god school dinners weren't that bad!!!

PS no trunks= better than ya Dad's pants

[Marine Boy]

Re: swimming bags

...And just out of interested... Who the hell was the kid who bit a chunk out of all the polystyrene floats surely to god school dinners weren't that bad!!!

PS no trunks= better than ya Dad's pants

The floats with the missing chunks around the edge! Ha-ha, I'd forgotten, but yes. It's true.

I was very impressionable at 9 years old - perhaps most kids are - but when my classmates realised my predicament, it was, "You have to do swimming in the nude if you haven't brought your trunks!" Oh, the terror!

[Heather74]

Re: swimming bags

Just had a flash back of walking through the freezing cold veruca bath and then having to kneel face to the wall/feet back while the teacher checked the soles of your feet!

[Marine Boy]

Re: swimming bags

Just had a flash back of walking through the freezing cold veruca bath and then having to kneel face to the wall/feet back while the teacher checked the soles of your feet!

That disinfectant foot bath thing was horrid. We had a cold stream of water constantly raining from above aswell, and no way to skip around to avoid it or the footbath, so it was a case of *get from changing room to pool-side as quick as was humanly possible*!

Oh dear Heather, those swim days are flooding back! We need a dedicated thread!

[Heather74]

Re: swimming bags

Just changed the thread title with Old gits blessing

Talking of cold water ..The showers after were the worse part of the whole lesson, we were made to take off our costumes and ring them out leaving us stood starkers, scarred for life I tell you LIFE....

[old git]

Re: swimming lessons

And how come you always seemed to come outside and it was freezing cold!.Didn't we ever have lessons in the summer?

[Heather74]

Re: swimming lessons

And how come you always seemed to come outside and it was freezing cold!.Didn't we ever have lessons in the summer?

Thats so true and we always seemed to have lessons right before lunch or playtime so you were stuck outside for an hour! With dripping wet hair from the showers.<<<< frozen.

[Marine Boy]

Re: swimming bags

Just changed the thread title with Old gits blessing

Excellent. Thanks

Talking of cold water ..The showers after were the worse part of the whole lesson, we were made to take off our costumes and ring them out leaving us stood starkers, scarred for life I tell you LIFE....

Same experience here. Though with us, it did rather depend on the teacher supervising the changing rooms. Some were stricter than others. And getting dried whilst trying to protect one's modesty became known as the 'towel-shuffle'!

[Aidanagain]

Re: swimming lessons

Had a bad experience at 12 ( built like a 7yr-old ) when one of the hard men took my float in the deep end ! Scary.
Learnt to swim in my 20's, love it now. I'd encourage everybody to learn asap.

[Loretta]

Re: swimming lessons

What about - `meet Dave, Daves great, Daveswonderfull, Dave can swim like a fish` LEARN TO SWIM YOUNG MAN LEARN TO SWIM!

Public information advert i thinks.

[Kiop]

Re: swimming lessons

I hated swimming lessons at junior school. I was so terrified of the water I wouldn't dare leave the side and nobody could make me either.

As a consequence, I never learnt to swim and have had no interest ever since; I'm still terrified of water.

Still, I'm not alone. My wife can't swim either and neither can my mum or dad.

[Richard1978]

Re: swimming lessons

I had lessons at 2 schools I went to.

The first was at a really old small (5 and 10 metres) pool with freezing cold changing rooms round the sides. At least it was the last lesson of the day & we went there & back on a coach.

The next school I went to was near enough to a pool that we could walk to. This was the Marple Dolphin Centre, which was renamed in the mid 1990s as too many people turned up thinking there was a collection of marine mammals there!

This was a bit more modern, with a larger 10 by 25 metre pool , though the instructor wasn't nearly as nice as the one at the previous pool.

Goggles were banned to there was no chance of fetching the black rubber bricks from the bottom. It was rumoured that someone had lost an eye by snapping elastic from some goggles that had brought in that rule.

Another rule was that during free swims no-one could swim at the deep end unless they had got their 200 metres badge.

I never managed to get more than a 25 metres, mainly because we spent so much time messing about with bricks & floats.

At least I didn't have to bring in some old pajamas for life saving practice, which my brother did.