Hardcore elderly swimmers demand life in the slow lane – Verity Lush

However, I do not see how it can be possible for you to do it in the only lane available.

The lanes, surely, are for people who are the more serious swimmers.

This currently is not me but I can empathise because, in the past, it has been.

It is a well-established fact that if one wishes to swim, non-stop, up and down, then one heads to the lanes.

If one wishes to float about, or indulge in a more leisurely splosh, or one wishes to simply walk, then one heads to the open area of the pool.

There is even something called lane etiquette – the old Victoria Baths used to display posters detailing it.

And I am 100 per cent certain it does not include trotting up and down them.

One elderly lady was plodding up and down in the solitary lane and was joined by two more.

All was well until a swimmer of the more serious variety emerged from the foul changing rooms.

She was clad like a seal and had a water bottle in one hand, plus did tumble turns at the end of the lane, thus demonstrating that she was therefore not to be messed with.

Subsequently, after daring to try and swim in the swimming pool, she complained, quite rightly, to the lifeguard.

Given that the ladies were both elderly and walking against the sheer force of water, you can probably guess the kind of pace we’re talking about here.

The lifeguard spoke to the ladies who proceeded to eat him alive.

These were hardcore females who’d lived through the post-war years, and a whippersnapper in a red aertex shirt with a whistle stood no chance.

They ignored him entirely, said loudly that they’d paid their money, and continued to carry out the lane-hogging equivalent of Del Boy and Rodney in the Robin on the M3 in the middle lane.

Unexpected and unwanted life forms in changing rooms

While getting changed at the pool this week, I made the mistake of looking at the floor. Oh, how I wished I had not.

Ants. Ants on the floor. Although preferable, I suppose, to the time someone pooed in the pool while I was swimming there. (‘Please get out, it’s breaking up in the water’, are words that haunt me still.)

Aside from the leisure centre doing its bit for the insect population, it also seems to be growing new and unexpected life forms in the changing areas.

It is best not to look too closely at the door handles, the actual doors or the inside walls of the cubicles themselves, or indeed any part of the shower cubicles if one is of a weak disposition.

Why can’t Royal Mail simply deliver a parcel without fuss and bother?

I had been waiting for a parcel to be delivered and eventually contacted the seller.

She gave me the tracking number and said that Royal Mail had tried to deliver it a week ago. However, they hadn’t left a ‘sorry you were out’ card.

I went to respectfully enquire at the depot to be told that I would be given my parcel only if my postman had ‘endorsed’ it (whatever that means) which he had not.

Subsequently, I have arranged to be in for redelivery.

But there was no apology on behalf of the postman, no sorry for the inconvenience, no apology for the missing package. Yet there was a great big sign requesting customers be polite.