Like Byron across the Hellespont, I went swimming yesterday, thirty lengths of the Seahaven pool. The day had a theme of wetness; I went inland to a funeral, the burial in a country churchyard. Down the lanes torrents of brown water gushed through breaches in the field and the undertaker told us, as we sheltered in the lych-gate, of how in nearby churchyards on sandstone, graves dug the day before could flood overnight, causing coffins to float. The priest made reference to Genesis Chapter 2.
This morning, though there is more Janathoning to come this afternoon, I went to my first swimming lesson with Karen Pickering Swim at the Chelsea School Pool, part of the University of Brighton's Eastbourne campus. The purpose of this is to learn crawl. I've been swimming a reasonable breaststroke for fifty years, but decided that the time has come to learn a faster stroke, useful if I ever do a triathlon. It was excellent. There were four of us, so Alan the instructor could devote plenty of time to each of us. He had me practicing the leg kick with a float; I have, it seems, runners' ankles, holding them too stiffly. Then he had me holding a float between my legs and swimming crawl with my arms only, first one arm and then both, and then finally tried to get me to breathe correctly, at every third stroke. He had a look at my breaststroke too, and pointed out that I don't glide sufficiently at the point when my arms are extended forward. At the very end he made me do the first step towards a tumble turn, an underwater forward roll.
