Wet and wild

I had today off, in lieu of all my extras over Christmas and New Year, so Philippa and I went for a relaxing spa day at a local leisure centre. It was nice, but the pool was full of families. I thought they’d all be back at school, but there seemed to be a lot of young ‘uns there waggling about between their armbands. Maybe they were all pre-school age and therefore not ‘playing hooky’ as I thought. Hard for me to tell when 98% of their body was underwater and I wasn’t wearing my glasses and my eyes were stinging from chlorine. All I know is, the calm relaxing atmosphere of the sauna gave way to a tumultuous nerve-shredding noise when you walked out to the pool area. Shrieks of laughter mixed with cries of fear, underpinned by the incessant droning of  maternal encouragement and noise of women yabbering on at each other like mad, presumably because they’ve been at home for two weeks and missed out on all the usual daily playground gossip and bitching. 
Most of it I could block out, but what tipped me over the edge and led to me heading for the showers was this - I was using one of the ‘swimming lanes’ to get in a few lengths of freestyle (or ‘forward crawl’ as I believe it‘s also known.) I was trying to use the technique they teach the professionals - keep your head down at all times, face under the water, tilting your head to the side every three strokes to breathe, using the gap under your armpit as you extend your arm over your head. I did this perfectly for a while, then had the horrible experience of opening my mouth wide to take in a huge gulp of air, only to have a sticking plaster float into my mouth as I went to breathe.
I don’t know which verruca-infested foot or scabby knee it came from, but I presume it was one of the children because it was small, and colourful, and had a shrivelled picture of what I think was supposed to be Spongebob on it. I spat it into my hand, resisted the urge to scream at everyone or vomit, and had a quiet word with the lifeguard. She wasn’t much help, but fortunately the person I spoke to on the way out seemed to be on their game, and we’ve been invited back next week for a freebie. We’ll take them up on that, but probably go later in the day. I’d rather be surrounded by sweaty, narcissistic beefcakes dropping into the pool for a cool-off after a gym session than swim through a gaggle of toddlers again. 
On a positive note, though - at least it wasn’t poo. 

RC 5-1-18