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SWIMMING LESSONS      I’ve never learned how to swim and when I saw an advert in the local freebie newspaper the other week to the effect that the local leisure centre would be holding free swimming lessons specially designed for Oldies I decided to take advantage of the offer. Well it’s something to do, and although for the last sixty eight years I’ve somehow managed to avoid falling into the canal and drowning you never know, especially if I start having the dizzy spells that older people are often prone to having. I therefore presented myself at the swimming pool at the appointed hour of 9 a.m.      There were eight would-be swimmers in total, all male, the powers that be having decided that any prospective women swimmers would be accommodated in another session, obviously deciding that the swimming lessons would go more swimmingly if there wasn’t any scope for hanky panky.      Of the eight of us one man has only one leg, one must tip the scales at thirty stones at the very least, one is a dwarf, and one has a humpback. The other four of us could be classified as normal, although one man has a glass eye, which strictly speaking is not completely normal, but a lot more normal than the rest of the motley crew. Lined up we must have looked like we were auditioning for Star Wars 7, The Return of the Grotesques.      I had grave doubts that once the fat one entered the pool he would displace so much water that we’d all be swimming in the rafters but I kept my thoughts to myself, at least for the time being.      The lesson began. First we had to lie on our bellies and do the breast stroke, as demonstrated by the lady instructor. This involved moving our arms and legs, or in the case of the one-legged man his arms and leg, in a sort of frog-like motion. After a minute or so the one-legged man asked, not unreasonably I thought, if his being minus a leg would cause him to go round in circles rather than in a straight line, once he was in the pool. The instructor said she hadn’t come across this potential problem before but that they would ‘cross that bridge when they came to it’.      A bridge that needed to be crossed immediately, as we’d already come to it, was that the fat man, balancing somewhat precariously on his belly, kept toppling over every time he made more than the smallest frog-like motion with his arms and legs, and on a couple of occasions would have squashed the man with the glass eye and maybe caused his glass eye to pop out if the latter hadn’t had the good sense to fling himself out of the fat man’s path. The instructor solved this by moving the fat man over against a wall, which stopped him toppling over on that side, and by shoring up his other side with two medicine balls from the gym.      The hump backed man, obviously a man with a sense of humour, said he was thankful we weren’t doing the back stroke or he’d be in the same boat and would require shoring up himself. His mention of boats got me thinking that if you wished to propel yourself through water then a boat would be a far easier and safer way of achieving this rather than by swimming, certainly a less tiring way, as after about five minutes of lying on my belly moving my arms and legs in frog-like motions I was absolutely knackered. I mentioned this to the instructor who said that when we were in the pool it wouldn’t be so tiring due to the buoyancy of the water. Fortunately we were then asked to get in the water to test out this theory.      At this point the fat man excused himself as he ‘needed the lavatory’. I hazarded a guess that it would be doubtful if the lavatory would feel the same way about him once he’d deposited his thirty stones on it.      There were steps down into the pool, which is four feet deep at the shallow end. When we walked down the steps the dwarf, at about three feet I would guess, disappeared completely under water before bobbing to the surface again and splashing for dear life in a furious dog paddle. The instructor told him to get out while she had a think about it, obviously never having had to instruct a three feet inch dwarf trying to stand up in a four feet deep pool before.      The fat fuck returned from the gents (you will see why I have relegated him from a fat man to a fat fuck in a moment). Eschewing use of the steps, and quite without warning, he jumped into the pool. A wave of tsunami proportions headed for me at about two hundred miles-an-hour, completely engulfing me, and filling my eyes with the heavily-chlorinated water. Minutes later my eyes were red raw from a combination of the effects of the chlorine and from rubbing them, and several hours later I still looked like the something out of a Hammer horror film. The Trouble couldn’t look at me without screwing up her eyes.      I’m in two minds as to whether I’ll be going to lesson two next week. If it wasn’t free I wouldn’t even be considering it. The following week. having taken the precaution of equipping myself with a pair of goggles should the fat fuck Mr Liddiard take it upon himself to jump in the pool again, I decided to risk continuing with my swimming lessons, and I’m glad I did because the second lesson went a lot more successfully for me than had the first. The same can’t be said for one of my fellow learner swimmers, the dwarf, Mr Leeson. Let me explain.      One of the teaching techniques employed by the swimming instructor Miss Hobday is to have the learner swimmers stand in the shallow end of the pool, squat down a little so that their shoulders are level with the top of the water, then practice the arm movements of the breast stroke. This, she assured us, would give us the feel of actually swimming and build up our confidence.      This exercise is fine for people of normal height, but as I mentioned last week the shallow end of the pool is four feet deep and Mr Leeson is only three feet tall, a discrepancy of one foot on the part of Mr Leeson. Last week when Mr Leeson got in the pool and promptly disappeared underwater he quickly got out again before he drowned. He obviously didn’t want the same thing to happen again so when Miss Hobday - who had more than likely instructed dozens of other would-be swimmers since our session last week and had probably forgotten all about Mr Leeson’s problem – asked us all to get in the pool, Mr Leeson refused point blank, and told Miss Hobday his reason for refusing, i.e. that if he did he may never see dry land again.      Miss Hobday had a think about it but from her bemused expression clearly a solution to the problem was beyond her. She told us to practise the arm movements of the breast stroke on dry land then disappeared for about ten minutes. When she returned, obviously having taken counsel from a higher authority, she told Mr Leeson that to overcome the problem he would be transferred to the ten-year-olds swimming classes, where the pupils would be the same size as he was. She added that unfortunately, unlike the Oldie lessons, the lessons wouldn’t be free and would have to be paid for by Mr Leeson, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances.      Mr Leeson hit the roof. Or as near to the roof as it’s possible for a dwarf to hit.      “Are you trying to belittle me?” he protested, ignoring the fact that nature itself had belittled him, in a manner of speaking. “If you think you’re putting me in with a load of ten-year-old kids and expect me to pay for the privilege you’ve got another think coming. People will accuse me of being a bloody paedophile!”      “Yes, I’ve already had to stop being a Santa Claus because of that,” said one of the normal men, Mr Littlewood. Without bothering to enlarge on his statement.      “And anyway,” said Mr Pargeter, the man with the glass eye, “How do you manage to teach children if they’re the same height as Mr Leeson, how come they don’t disappear under the water?”      A good point, and one I hadn’t thought of myself.      “Yes, if the water goes over Mr Leeson’s head it’ll go over a child’s head as well,” said the man with the hump back, Mr Gearing, adding his threepennyworth.      Miss Hobday had the answer however: “We use a different teaching system for children,” she said primly.      “Well then use your usual system for us and the children’s system for Mr Leeson,” said Mr Pargeter. THE FOLLOWING WEEK We found out that the system employed by the local leisure centre to teach ten-year-olds to swim is to first kit out him or her with inflatable arm and leg bands. Having been made buoyant little Brad or Jennifer is then fitted with a shoulder harness attached to a long length of rope. The child then gets in the water and is gently towed across the width of the pool by the instructor whilst simulating the arm and leg movements of the breast stroke. The idea is that over a period of time the child will become less and less dependant on the arm and leg bands, and the harness and tow rope, and will eventually be able to swim unaided.      This is the system now being employed by our swimming instructor, Miss Hobday, to instruct our dwarf, Mr Leeson. Naturally while she is towing Mr Leeson to and fro across the pool she can’t be instructing the seven non-dwarfs in her class, who are left to their own devices. Miss Hobday apologised in advance for this inconvenience but said there was nothing she could do about it, that another instructor couldn’t be spared, they didn’t grow on trees, and that she had been told by her superiors to devote half her time to teaching Mr Leeson to swim by the ten-year-olds method, and the other half to teaching the rest of us to swim by the normal method.      One of the normal method men, Mr Hall, said that this was patently unfair as there were seven non-dwarfs in our group and only one dwarf, and that to be fair our hour’s instruction should be split up in the ratio 7.1, seven parts going to the normals and one part to the dwarf. Mr Leeson said that would mean this would give him only seven and a half minutes instruction time per session while the rest of us would have fifty two and a half minutes, which was not only clearly unfair but discrimination against dwarfs.      Before Miss Hobday could make a ruling on this the fat fuck Mr Liddiard complicated matters by saying that he too wanted to be treated like a ten-year-old and be kitted out with arm and leg bands and towed across the pool by Miss Hobday.      There is a little history with Mr Liddiard and Miss Hobday, inasmuch as just before the session was about to begin Mr Liddiard took it upon himself to jump in the pool again, despite having been warned not to do this after what happened to me during our first lesson. Fortunately no one was in the pool this time so nobody was in danger of being drowned, but the resultant splash drenched Miss Hobday, who was standing poolside, transforming her neatly-ironed white top and shorts into saturated and see-through top and shorts, and her neatly coiffed hair into a bedraggled mess. This could well explain what she then said to Mr Liddiard, when he asked to be treated like a ten-year-old and be kitted out with arm and leg bands and towed across the pool, which was, and I quote: “If I can get hold of four Goodyear blimps for your arm and leg bands and a ten ton lorry in which to tow you across the pool I will do that: in the meantime you’ll have to stay with the others.”      Three of us, including me, applauded her. The man with the glass eye, Mr Pargeter, and the man with the hump back, Mr Gearing, laughed out loud, but then both had axes to grind, Mr Liddiard having previously referred to them, within their hearing, as Cat’s Eye and Quasimodo.      Mr Liddiard, red-faced and fuming, left the scene without a word, and that was the last we saw of him. Five minutes before the scheduled end of the lesson, Miss Hobday was summoned to the office. Ominously, we didn’t see her again either. THE FOLLOWING WEEK About half an hour before I was due to set off for my next swimming lesson the I had a phone call from the manageress of the leisure centre telling me not to bother, as following her altercation with the fat fuck last week the swimming instructor, Miss Hobday, had been suspended on full pay until such time as the matter had been fully investigated by an independent body and a decision had been made as to her future. The manageress went on to tell me they were trying to find a replacement for Miss Hobday but that she didn’t hold out much hope because ‘you know how things are’.      I said: “No, I don’t know how things are, how are they?”      “Well, it’s such a long process getting a replacement,” she explained, “what with all the vetting we have to do in case the applicants are paedophiles or sex crimes offenders, what with instructors coming into contact with children and vulnerable adults. It will be more than likely that Miss Hobday will be back with us by the time we’ve done all the vetting so it just wouldn’t be worth our while.”      I thought about this for a moment then played what I thought was a trump card. “You do realise you’re discriminating against Mr Leeson, do you?”      “Is he the dwarf?”      “Yes.”      “No we’re not. We’ve managed to get the dwarf, the fat man and the gentleman with the hump back in with another group.”      I went berserk. “The fat man? He’s the cause of all the trouble in the first place!”      “Maybe he is, but that doesn’t give us carte blanche to discriminate against him.”      “And what about the rest of us?”      “What do you mean?”      “Well you’re discriminating against us as well, aren’t you. You’re discriminating against the rest of us for not being dwarves, fat men or hunchbacks.”      She thought about this for a moment before conceding: “Well in a way we are suppose.” But then added, with a note of relief, “But you can’t discriminate against people for being normal.”      It is impossible to argue with logic like that so I tried a different tack. “And what about the man with the glass eye?”      “What man with what glass eye?”      “Mr Pargeter. You don’t you think he’ll sue you for discriminating against people with only one eye when he hears about what you’ve done for the others?”      “Thanks for the tip off. We’ll be getting in touch with him. Well goodbye.”      “I’ve got a club foot!”      There was silence on the otherend of the line for a moment, then, "A club foot?”      “Yes.”      Silence again, then, “It doesn’t say anything here about you having a club foot?”      “I don’t like to make a fuss about it.”      More silence, then she said: “Can you make Mondays at 10.30?”     “I think I should be able to limp along to that. God willing.” THE FOLLOWING WEEK Since being invited by the leisure centre manageress to join the 10.30 Monday swimming class I discovered, thanks to a chance meeting in Matalan with the hump back Mr Gearing (apparently their jumpers are the only ones that will fit him), that the class in question is the female equivalent of our men’s oldies class. Evidently the leisure centre powers that be have decided in their wisdom to lump us all together, disregarding their previous reservations about the risk of possible hanky panky, rather than take the risk of being sued by Mr Gearing, the dwarf Mr Leeson, the fat fuck Mr Liddiard, the man with the glass eye Mr Pargiter, and the man with the club foot, me.      In the event I chose not to attend the lesson. I knew what would happen. Once the instructor had started to give Mr Leeson individual tuition by towing him across the pool Mr Liddiard would demand the same treatment. What would happen after I don’t know, except that it would be some sort of shambles, but whatever it was it certainly didn’t warrant me having to pretend I have a club foot. (I hadn’t gone very far down that road beyond searching through our charity shop’s extensive range of footwear in order to see if there was anything in Elton John style platform soled boots I could borrow one of. There was one pair, and in only half a size less than my size, but after trying one of them on I found that although I could certainly limp, one leg being about three inches longer than the other, I had a job staying on my feet.)      When I say I didn’t go to the leisure centre that isn’t strictly true. I went but I didn’t go inside the building. I wanted to see if my suspicions would turn out to be correct.      The exterior walls of the swimming pool are made of plate glass so it is easy to see inside. I duly took up position outside at 10.30 on the dot and peered within. There were eight would-be swimmers in all, four of them women, the other four being the men from my class, all stood poolside listening to the instructor.      Many women in their sixties and even their seventies can still be quite attractive but the four women I was now looking at were definitely not among their number. That’s putting it as diplomatically as I can. Putting it as undiplomatically as I can they were fat ugly cows. Hanky panky with them would certainly not be on the agenda. A hanky maybe, to dry your tears, but most definitely no panky.      I settled myself to await developments, my nose pressed to the glass to get a better view, when suddenly I heard a voice filled with authority behind me.      “Hoy! What’s your game?”      I turned to see a security man, presumably employed by the leisure centre, although I’d never seen one before. Perhaps they’re like policemen, only ever there when you don’t want them.      “Bloody Peeping Tom, are you? Sodding Peeping Tom pervert?” he snarled.      I looked at him in disbelief. It was quite genuine disbelief too, I didn’t have to pretend. “Are you joking?” I said. “Have you seen what’s in the pool at the moment?” I looked through the glass at the group of swimmers. His gaze followed mine. “If I wanted to be a Peeping Tom,” I went on, “which I don’t, I would do my peeping when the pool was full of nubile young sixteen to eighteen-year-old girls, not when it’s occupied by a dwarf, a fat fuck, a hump back, a man with a glass eye and four old women with tits hanging down to their waist. So kindly piss off and mind your own business.”      He went. And so did I, very soon afterwards, before someone else who had difficulty minding their own business came along.      So my swimming career has come to a premature end, even before it ever really started. And if I fall in the canal I shall just have to take my chances.