Swimmingly

I went swimming at Jesus Green yesterday and it was great.

I just did 13 lengths of Jesus Green, but felt quite cleansed after. My legs felt weak afterwards, and my arms ached a touch this morning, from which I judge it to have been actually a decent workout, and yet easy to *do*, not in constant pain like trying to go jogging :)

I hadn't been swimming for years[1], not since I was at school. Dad and I used to swim quite a lot (often and far, in fact, I was briefly quite selkie).

[1] Except last week, I *had* arranged to go in the cam at the puntmoot, in lead up to taking up swimming again.

I thought it might be too cold, it hadn't been a very summery day, and flirting with raining. But the water was cool, which felt pretty good, and to make up for it, the showers were full and hot, which felt very very good. Though it would be nice to be sunny *sometimes*

I thought I mightn't be able to do it any more. In fact, I was AFAICT, pretty slow -- I can still swim, but not with a very efficient technique any more. But I can get up and down enough that it works rather than doesn't work.

I thought I might be embarrassed at stripping off in public -- my sveltness wars with my tact and my constantness as aspects that appeal people to me the least :) I think the same every time I get a new girlfriend, for that matter. But since Ghoti's party, I decided I might be able to improve it, but didn't see any point worrying about it. And indeed, no-one objected, and somehow when everyone's drenched its different.

It was quite quiet. There were at most half-a-dozen people, all circular swimming, so pretty much no-one's in anyone's way whatever happens. A couple of people in mini-wetsuits (which makes you look like you know what you're doing), a couple of middle-aged men who look like they could swim for leagues, a young couple who seemed to come to swim two lengths and shower together :) A young man in red shorts who practised diving with the lifeguards whenever the middle was clear. I met one of the men in the changing area coming out, and he said he came every day, and highly recommended it.

ETA: And I dropped my watch, but it overfulfulls its waterproof rating, and a nice man found it for me, and I can still manage to scoop stuff up from the bottom in a shallowish end.

Porcelator

In a comment to angoel, I looked up for another word for the overflow in a sink/bath, and wikipedia lists porcelator, supposedly american. However, it's *not* in the dictionary.

Either it's a recent coinage, or someone spoofed it onto wikipedia, I can only imagine. But which? There were other hits, but maybe it was a *good* spoof. How do you tell? :) *Had* anyone heard it before?

PS

PS#1. What I do need is to recall a little technique. I never *did* like getting water on my eyes or nose, so I tend to revert to inefficient face-out-of-the-water versions :) By far the most pleasant (if not very efficient) was backstroke, being essentially lying down and going at whatever speed I liked.

PS#2. *hugs* Thanks to everyone who pointed out that that I'd actually swum reasonably far. When Dad and I were in practice we used to think 1km (40 lengths) was a decent session and 1m (64 lengths) a good session, and in retrospect I probably never found it easy, so in fact I was actually nearly as good as I ever was. We used to get through it by finding synonyms for each number and calling out as we went past :)

PS#3. I was examining the parkside timetable (here) and gave up in disgust. It's partitioned into "swim for all" "splash happy" "splash fitness" and orthogonally into "(laned)", "()" or "(disco)" with a coloured key, but it doesn't actually *say* what it means. I *infer* that it refers to the sorts of swimming that are permitted/encouraged, but it *sounds* like it means "leisure club members" and "kids". Does anyone know what it *does* mean?