24th July 2010

The hat goes on ahead.

 24th July
The hat goes on ahead.

The idea for The Great Scottish Swim came to me by way of a swimming hat. As usual in the pool, I am swimming up and down and searching inside my head for any flicker of a strand of a train of thought to prevent myself from turning inside out with boredom, when I notice the lady swimming ahead of me has a swimming hat with something indistinct written on it. It’s unusual, in a swimming pool, to be presented with reading material, but whenever the printed word crops up in an underwater context, I like to make the most of it.

I try to speed up a little so I can read what it says, but she’s swimming front crawl and she’s too fast for me. She’s so fast, that a length and half later, she overtakes me. In the midst of this manoeuvre, I crane my head round to see what’s written on her hat, but just as she levels up with me, my head is out of the water and hers is under the water. Probably just as well. There’s nothing more alarming than turning to look sideways underwater to find someone else goggling back at you. I decide to wait until we meet at one end, and then I can decipher the mysterious hat message.

As she swims into view, the possibility that I might look like a stalker does occur to me and as she draws up next me I’m not entirely sure it’s a good thing that it turns out she’s someone I’ve met before. In the split second between recognising her and greeting her, I weigh up in my head whether it would sound more or less insane to admit that over the last twenty minutes I’ve been possessed by a maniac urge to read the writing on her swimming hat, or whether it’s possible she’s been engrossed in her own swim and hasn’t even noticed my hat-directed contortions. At times like this, I’m reminded of my daughter’s advice; ‘What would normal people do?’

I take off my goggles and pretend to be a normal person. I say ‘Hi’ and laugh when she says ‘cold enough for you?’ and merely glance at her hat. Yes. Thought so. It says ‘Great North Swim.’

As soon as I arrive home, I look it up on the internet. The swim at Windermere is full, but there is one is Scotland.
In August? Yes, I can do that.
One mile? Yes, I can do that. In cold water?
Yes, I can do that.

Then I get to the small print ... if temperatures should fall beneath 15 degrees, competitors are required to wear a wetsuit ...