On the Beat

My local swimming baths, Glenogle – named after one of my favourite highland glens, the narrow pass between Loch Earn and Glen Dochart - is closing down for a refurbishment.

There are rumours that it is closing down, period; but the public body that runs the pools is adamant that after eighteen months of work, they will re-open.

I hope so: it is only a short walk from my flat (though God knows where I might be in eighteen months’ time!), and for the last three months I have been trying to go there three times a week. (Being out of town a lot in the last four weeks has made that a little difficult, of course!)

Today was my last visit to the pool, at least until 2010.

It is a fine Victorian building: light, airy, and rather unbusy. (Hence my suspicion it might not re-open…)

Photo from Lesley Hind’s blog

There are several old men – older than me, at least – who always seem to be there, including one called Jimmy, who often sings whilst he is in the pool; indeed, he sings out of the pool, too; perhaps he sings all the time.

Today, as he swam, he was singing…

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

So will you please say hello to the folks that I know,
Tell them I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go,
I was singing this song.

It seemed kind of appropriate, and made me smile, and made me sad, as I ploughed up and down in the water.

For the first time in maybe three weeks, I went swimming this morning.

I hadn’t been for a while, because first I had a cold, then I was busy and in Manchester and London, and then most of this week it didn’t really occur to me.

The pool opens early, and I was there at eight a.m. I did thirty lengths, a mixture of breast stroke and crawl; I prefer breast stroke (a shallow, energetic stroke, my nose just below the surface so it can rise and take a breath) to crawl, though I do crawl because one of the main reasons to swim is to exercise my upper body (I walk a lot, so my legs get a lot of exercise). I am quite fast – not the fastest in the pool, perhaps, but near it – and my crawl is quite elegant: I hardly splash, my legs kicking just enough to keep my body stable, my hands breaking the water gently; I breath every other stroke (when going flat out – sprinting for a length or two – I barely breath, maybe twice in a length).

I find swimming meditative: getting into a rhythm, focussing on my breathing, freeing the mind. (Playing the saxophone was the same: it is all about controlling breathing and muscles; except the neighbours don’t complain when I go swimming. And I was never that good at playing the saxophone.) My mind wanders, becomes empty, lost in the water. Just the water and the motion and repetitive strokes.

I have felt out of sorts this week, and going swimming helped: I now feel energised, maybe even happy. Contemplative, thoughtful, but energised.

It is a sunny morning; I woke up early and went swimming before breakfast. The pool was crowded with OAPs and people ploughing the lanes before going to work.

I had breakfast in a café around the corner, reading the paper whilst nibbling a pain au raisin and drinking several cups of coffee.

All of which may explain why I felt in the mood for some loud music when I got in. I put on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, a particularly dark and brooding album that I rarely play: but today my upbeat mood could cope with the intensity. Plus it has some really good beats on it.

So I cranked up the volume. Thus it was that I missed two calls to my phone!

It really is a great album, though. Just dark.

I went swimming in my local pool today; it is an old Victorian building, with the men's changing cubicle along one side of the pool, the women's on the other.

I noticed someone in the pool. They were talking on a mobile phone.

Shall I just run that by you again? A mobile phone. In the swimming pool.