Learning to Swim in the 1980s Part 1

For the first 11-years of my life I was terrified of water. I couldn’t swim, and I never had any intention of learning how to. This was a problem for two reasons. Firstly, I lived in a coastal town and my mum insisted that I, along with all of my siblings, learned how to swim. Secondly, in the 1980s, Tuesday mornings at school meant a trip to the local swimming baths as part of our Physical Education provision, and there was no getting out of it. I'd watched the film Jaws many times, but it wasn't the shark which was the issue for me, it was the water itself. For those of you who can’t swim or were late learners, I think you know where this is headed, so strap yourselves in.

If you think back to your school days, you’ll no doubt recall that there were various pecking orders in play such physical attractiveness, the length of your hair, strength, speed, sport, popularity, wealth or intellect etc. and you kind of knew your position in each of them. Perhaps you were fastest runner or the most fancied member of your class? Perhaps you were the best at Maths or Art? Such things are very important to kids, and it takes a few decades of life kicking us about a bit before the, "Screw it, that'll do" attitude releases us from the shackles of such insecurities.

At the time I was perhaps just below mid-table in most categories, but when it came to Tuesday mornings in the mid-1980s, I didn’t even make the list, and any ranking I held in the other categories would be decimated for a few days afterwards. Swimming lessons were like Kryptonite to Superman for me. It was difficult enough trying to hold your own in a tough 80s school at the best of times, so when one of your greatest fears was guaranteed to recur on a weekly basis, it didn’t pay well to pretend to be the tough guy on Monday morning, knowing that come Tuesday afternoon, your bluff will have well and truly been called.

The journey to the swimming baths had one silver lining. We walked there on foot in two column formation carrying our kits in over-used, plastic Kwik Save bags, but the route took us down the road next to the one where I lived. They were joined by an alleyway which meant for a brief moment I could catch a glimpse of home knowing that it would be only an hour or so of terror at the baths before I could get on with the rest of the day and be home by 3:15.

Our swimming baths were built in the Victorian era. There were two pools, each surrounded by not-so-private changing cubicles. If you happened to get one with a broken lock, then you’d have to press your backside against it whilst getting changed. The larger pool had a balcony from which you could watch swimming galas. I loved going to the galas, so long as I was a spectator and as far away from the 6f 6ins deep end as possible. I was more comfortable with the shallower pool. Its deep end was only 6-feet, and although this was not far off the depth of the deeper pool, to a non-swimmer, the difference might as well have been 100 feet.

The swimming baths in question

The water in both pools was filtered from a nearby river which meant it was saltwater. This, when combined with Chlorine, meant that if you swallowed some (which any panicking non-swimmer would do on a regular basis), then you wouldn’t need to worry about constipation later in the day. If ever there was a number one enema, a mouthful of seawater and chlorine was most definitely it.

Similar to the other pecking order categories at school, there was also one for swimming. Strong swimmers stayed in the deep end, new swimmers stayed in the middle, and the non-swimmers had the shallow end to themselves. So long as my feet could touch the bottom of the pool and my head was above the water, I was OK. There were maybe six or seven of us who couldn’t swim, and our weekly tasks were threefold. First, we had to hold onto the bar on the shallow end wall, lay on our stomachs and kick our feet behind us. Next, we were given a small float which we had to hold out in front of us and propel ourselves across the width of the pool by kicking our feet. Finally, we had to float on our backs, which is a lot easier to do in saltwater than unsalted. I didn’t like this exercise much because I needed one of the instructors or a teacher to help hold my back up whilst doing it. Seeing one of your teachers in their swimming gear was weird enough, but having one of them try and help you float was a whole new level.

Now for the first half of the1986 term, this was all I did on swimming day. That was until the last session of the year, just before the break for the summer holidays.

The march to the baths followed its usual course. I smiled to myself as I caught a glimpse of my bedroom window through the alleyway. "Just one more swim before the summer holidays" I thought to myself. The day was going well, so much so that upon arriving at the baths I managed to get a changing cubicle with a working lock. Once in the water and practising the float on your back exercise, I noticed my teacher talking to one of the swimming instructors on the poolside. Their heads were nodding and they were intermittently glancing in my direction. At first, I thought they were suspecting that I’d urinated in the pool. Apparently, there was a special chemical that had been added to the water which would turn yellow if anyone took a sly wee. After checking there was no yellow dye around me, I thought that they might possibly be talking about the small dot I had on the sole of my right foot which could have been a verruca. One of the girls in my class had been singled out the week before for having one, and after being treated like a leper for a couple of days was now wearing a bright pink rubber 'swimming sock' over her left foot.

After talking to the instructor for another minute or so, my teacher beckoned me over. I bobbed innocently to the side of the pool like an astronaut bouncing on the Moon and sat on the shallow end steps.

“We think you’re ready to try swimming properly”, he said.

“What d’you mean?” I replied, unsure he’d got the right person.

“We want you to try and swim across the deep end, but don’t worry, there’ll be people helping you.”

I looked towards the deep end in horror. Along its side were about twenty pupils stood in a line all laughing with one another. Next to them was another instructor who turned away from them for a moment. As she did so, one of the naughty kids from the year above me broke rank and did a running bomb into the pool much to the delight of his friends. I looked back at my teacher and pleaded with him that I wasn’t ready.

“It’s alright,” he said calmly. "You’ll be fine." He was one of my favourite teachers. We'd always got on and the only thing I could think was, "How could you betray me like this?" After arguing my case further but to no avail, I got out of the shallow end and began a very slow, despondent walk towards the deep end of the pool.

Now I’ve experienced some frightening things in my life, but I can’t adequately communicate what I was feeling at that moment. I have an eidetic memory of quite a lot of the the 1980s, hence this blog, but what I was thinking during that walk still evades me to this day.

Upon reaching the deep end, I realised why the strong swimmers had been told to vacate the water and line up along its edge. It was so the non-swimmers could attempt a crossing in front of them. The challenge itself was bad enough, but to have twenty of your peers watching you whilst attempting it took things to a whole new level. Humiliation was commonly used throughout the 1970s and 80s as a means of 'helping' children overcome their fears. Years later, some of you might have heard your parents say something along the lines of, "Well, it never did you any harm, did it?" Personally, I'm still undecided on the matter.

I nervously walked my skinny frame down six of the deep end steps until I was submerged up to my chest. There were about another ten steps below them that descended into darkness. I was used to the feel of the shallow end water and could easily see the pool floor through it, but this was very different. I could sense the huge mass of water beneath me, but I couldn't make out the pool floor. My teeth were chattering, my legs were shaking and my eyes were wide. All hallmarks of a primate in distress. Awaiting further instructions, I sensed in my periphery a tall, stocky women with short dark hair. It was the swimming instructor who had been talking to my teacher. She was wearing a pair of blue trousers and a yellow t-shirt, and in her right hand was the ‘help’ that my teacher had promised me would be available if I got into difficultly. It was a 7-foot-long wooden pole with a large plastic hoop attached to the end of it, which looked like it had been fashioned out of a piece of garden hose piping.

“When I blow my whistle,” she shouted sternly, “Follow the hoop."

She then put her whistle between her lips, dangled the hoop about two feet in front of me like a dolphin trainer, and blew hard.

As the whistle sounded, I quickly calculated the distance between me and the hoop. I knew I could make the leap and grab it. I could then kick my feet like I did in the float exercise and would easily make it across. Happy with my calculation, I took a deep breath and launched myself off the steps, arms outstretched; hands ready to grasp.

At that moment, the swimming instructor yanked the hoop into the air out of my reach, and I hit the water hard. Realising that there was no pool floor within reach, even on tiptoe, I began to flail my arms and legs. The only swimming stroke I’d ever attempted was something called the 'Doggy-paddle', which is basically how dogs and other quadrupeds swim. I looked towards the steps on the other side of the deep end, my arms scooping as much water as they could beneath me, and my legs kicking woefully out of sync. There were three sounds I recall. The instructor repeatedly shouting, “Kick” in a loud, stern tone, the laughter of about twenty of my school peers, and deep moans of terror coming from my own mouth.

The panic put me into a stall. Duncan Goodhew and Sharon Davies wasn’t happening, and I was running out of energy fast. As I sunk lower, I tilted my head back and opened my mouth wide to ensure maximum air intake. The first pint of chlorinated saltwater went down without triggering my gag reflex. Then it dawned on me…I was literally drowning.

“So, this is what it feels like to drown?” I thought to myself. I know. It seems like like a weird thing to think in such circumstances, doesn't it? But what else would you think? The kids laughing from the poolside didn’t matter any more. The humiliation didn’t matter any more. It was just me versus a few hundred tons of water, and I was losing. It was at that moment that the true purpose of the hoop on the stick revealed itself.

As I was about to down another pint of my least-favourite beverage, I felt someone or something grab the back of my neck. A moment later, the sound of gurgling, choking and churning cross-faded into the echoing screams and splashes of the swimming pool once more. As my senses stabilised, I realised that I was traveling swiftly across the surface of the deep end without my arms or legs moving. A second later, I realised that I had a plastic hoop around my neck and was being dragged unceremoniously across the water by a frowning, somewhat disappointed-looking swimming instructor. After being forcibly dragged aground on the opposite-side steps of the deep end, I clambered out and walked silently past the line of laughing advanced swimmers back to my cubicle.

I dried and dressed myself without any internal dialogue going on in my mind. It was as if I was a robot which had malfunctioned in some manner, or had it's memory wiped. When I emerged from my cubicle, I found myself stood in front of one of my classmates who was laughing hysterically. The internal dialogue returned and I immediately challenged him to a fight to which he agreed. As we marched outside, one of the girls from my class who I had always been fond off tried to stop me, but I was having none of it. Me and the laughing classmate found a place down the side of the swimming baths, threw our Kwik Save bags to the ground and squared up. Without hesitation I swung for him, but he dodged the shot easily and right-hooked me powerfully in the mouth. The shock of the punch was worse than the pain of the split lip, but the hit brought the fight to a rapid conclusion.

I walked back to school in two-by-two formation in turmoil. I had never experienced such humiliation, and now had to endure a twenty-minute walk alongside the girl I fancied with my lip bleeding heavily and my already over-used Kwik Save bag now split across its base. She handed me a real cotton handkerchief which I used to help stem the blood. It was a lot softer and comforting than the toilet roll and jumper sleeves I'd used for such things in the past.

What little credibility I held at school had been completely annihilated. It would be a long and lonely summer break that year, but one which would mark a major turning point in my life.