I love swimming. Many of you will know that earlier this year I did the Swimathon (think yourself lucky the donations are closed or I would have included a link to the web page) so I’m serious about swimming.  At times a little too serious.  I’m not one of these swim with your head out of the water having a chat types.  I’m a goggles, nose clip, proper trunks (none of these swim short jobbies, don’t people understand anything about the amount of drag those things cause?).   I’m also used to serious pools.   They are usually at least 25 meters or even 50m. So when I come on holiday the pool is a bit of a disappointment.  2 strokes then I bang my head (stop sniggering at the back). However the pool in the Wow villa (or La Villa Wow to give it it’s full Spanish name) is massive, so I can do some proper swimming.

One thing that I have never been able to master is the tumble turn. You know the thing where instead of stopping at the end of the pool, panting and then heading off again you just roll over and start your next length. The advantage about this is that it saves time. I’m keen to get my 100 lengths down to less than an hour for the next Swimathon (did I tell you I’m doing it next year? Do you want to sponsor me?).  Having such a big pool, a bit of time and not having to contend with the old woman’s social club clogging up the pool, I’ve set myself the challenge that by the end of the holiday I’ll be tumbling like Michael Phelps (although knowing me it will be more like Michael Crawford).   So I watched a YouTube video and today began my tumbling training.  So far I can report that I can tumble.  I don’t end up facing the right way, I can’t  hear anything because my ears are full of water and it takes me twice as long for me to recover than if I just stopped and turned around, but hey, it’s a start.

I also faced my other pool nemesis.  The lilo.  When you see people floating around on lilos with a drink looking chilled it always looks cool.  How they get onto the flaming thing and look that chilled is beyond me.  Nico seem to have developed a good technique. Just float the lilo out into the pool and belly flop onto it.  Now I have poor hand eye co-ordination at the best of times so I’m guessing my body-lilo co-ordination technique will be much the same, so I’m giving that technique a miss.

At one point today I heard a couple of splashes as Tibu got in the pool.  As I looked up I was greeted by the site of Tibu, lying on his back on the lilo, head on the pillow looking like George Michael in the Club Tropicana video.  He didn’t even look wet!  I’m convinced in Spain that they must teach lilo mounting as part of the national curriculum. (Well they certainly don’t teach economics.  Bit of politics there…I feel like I’m channeling Ben Elton here). I can just imagine classes of primary school children walking in pairs to the local (open air) pool with their lilos under their arms.  I think the skill is genetic hence Nico’s ability to control the air filled beast that is a lilo.

I however have no Spanish genes.  Still, undeterred I thought I’d give it a go.  I donned my goggles and nose clip (I did tell you I took these things seriously) and decided to tame this monster.  The approach I took was to straddle it and push off into deeper water where I planned to pull my legs onto the lilo. However after pushing off I kind of got stuck.  So there I am straddling a lilo which has now popped up in front of my face so I can’t see where I am going, wearing goggles and a nose clip.  Now if this was a  sitcom written by Jimmy Perry (Allo Allo, Are You Being Served, Hi-de-Hi etc.) then a party of school children who are on their way to their lilo lessons would walk past and be shocked at the sight of a fat, red Englishman looking as though he is doing something unspeakable to a lilo.  If it was a Ben Elton sit com it would just be crap and get cancelled after one series (ooh a bit of satire there. Which is exactly what Ben Elton should have stuck to). Alas this isn’t a sitcom.  Just a bit embarrassing, which is why I’m so glad we have a no pictures by the pool policy.

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