Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Against the Tide - in the Lap Lane of the Gods

Does anything illustrate the paradoxical nature of our yearning for personal freedom more than the plight of the lap swimmer at the local pool? All they want is a simple, meditative swim, a soothing balm to the worry and strife of everyday life. But, as flies to wanton boys, they know they will be thwarted at every tumble turn, if not by whimsical water gods, then for no more prosaic reason than everyone else wants the same!

It’s 4.00pm on Sunday. A new workweek is fast approaching but I’m feeling guilty about my day of sloth: I’ll grab my togs and nip down to the nearby Aqua Hub.

Grab your what? Your... togs?

You know, bathers, trunks, cozzies...

But when I find them in my sock drawer I realise they’d work better as netting on my apricot tree. I make a detour to the Lifestyle and Sportswear shop where I’m confronted by my own mortality – racks of g-stringy thingies and not a dignified pair of togs in sight. Eventually I emerge with a pair of Funky Trunks, embarrassingly loose and lairy. But that’s not all. The shop assistant knows a soft touch when he sees one on his doorstep and before I can depart he has engaged me in deep conversation about must have ‘training aids’ to improve my performance. I’ll need a golf cart to carry them all.

He has persuaded me that I will be naked without biofuse flexiseal triathalon goggles and silicone cap and that I will sink to the bottom if not equipped with pullbuoy, hand paddles, monofin, snorkel, kickboard and stopwatch. Oh, and MP3 player and headphones. There are further benefits to these accessories, he explains, as I can assemble them on the wall at the start of the lane for my (but no one else’s) convenience, conveying the necessity of an uninterrupted training routine, thus keeping others out of my lane. I like his thinking.

I arrive at the pool. It’s late Sunday afternoon. A quick glance; it doesn’t look too crowded. I’ve checked the online schedule and done my calculations: elderly patrons like the mornings, it’s more social and it means they save on the shower at home; exhausted parents want to get their pre-school kids home before more fights break out; lap loners – like me – need to prepare themselves for work next day; so yes, a lane to myself is within my grasp. Luxury! But wait, what’s this? A small bus has pulled up, and out troops a soccer team. Before I can say Dawn Fraser they’ve occupied lanes 1 and 2 and their noise and playfulness has direct implications for lanes 3 and 4, the smooth passage of swimmers now obstructed by roiling waters, foam rubber flotsam and occasional limbs thrust violently across their path in sudden pursuit or retreat. Should I complain? Hmmm. Definitely not to the soccer team. Pool attendant? Not a yellow shirt in sight. A letter to management perhaps? Maybe, but what about my meditative laps?

I’m already off balance. I doused myself in hand sanitiser at the front desk, and made for the change rooms with a spring in my step. But this meant I slipped on the accumulated daily debris – in this case discarded plastic lolly-bags – banging my exposed coccyx on the puddled and muddied tiled floor. The air is hot, foetid and loaded with Lynx Africa:

I can feel the unmistakable stirrings of an asthma attack. Still, I’d brought my puffer and calmed myself before entering the maelstrom. This means I walked straight past the sign insisting that I shower before entering the pool. Later I tried to rationalise this oversight by observing that all of my fellow pool users had done likewise, so that collectively we had created a giant petri dish for the propagation of the kind of bacteria that will keep me home from work for the next couple of weeks. It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.

Unwashed but unbowed I survey the scene more forensically. Apart from the soccer boys there seems to be quite a few young kids in lane 6. And is that a yellowy sort of cloud hovering in the limpid chemical blue in that vicinity? Surely not, there’s a supervising parent nearby... ahhh... on his mobile. In lane 5 a gasping, lobster-red septuagenarian has just removed his snorkel and goggles and with a bronchial hoik passes his hand swiftly over his mouth and plunges it into the primordial swamp that lanes 5 and 6 have become. Perhaps I could retreat to the steam room and wait for the chlorine to do its work. However, therein, two blokes are sweating out last night’s curry while doing yoga on the floor. In the spa three young women from the gym overhead are washing their sweat away.

So, back to the lanes. This really is tricky. I know most pools categorise their available lanes as slow, medium or fast. “So,” I think to myself, “how medium is medium?” I flag down an attendant (What’s happened to lifeguards?) who, with an impatient eye-roll explains that medium is 45-60 seconds to complete a 50- metre lap. “Wow,” I say, by now a bit of a smart arse, “the new medium is pretty… fast.”

But when I turn to study each lane I realise that my fellow swimmers have already completely subverted this ruling and swim to the tick of a totally different clock. There are kick-boarders in the fast lane, Ian Thorpe wannabees slicing their way through the line of plodding snorkelers in the medium lane and someone trying to do butterfly in the slow lane where an ageing arthritic pilgrim is sleepwalking. And then of course, clinging limpet-like to the start of lanes 1 and 2 there are the little groups up for a chat “who are about to begin their swim”, but need to share the intricacies of their medical condition first. And in lane 3 (the medium lane) there’s a woman down the deep end doing a gym routine up against the pool wall. Will she desist once she realises I am going to swim in her lane? I analyse each swimmer carefully, looking for signs of weakness: are they flagging, about to give up, anticipating that the tipping point might be the entry of a new swimmer into their lane? In such ways I too slide from the high moral ground into the swamp.

Who is responsible for this mayhem? I want to protest, but my helpful pool attendant has disappeared (nipped out for a quick smoke?). And so I am forced to contemplate the vagaries of human nature. There is a strong tendency, I’ve noticed, for even the most tolerant and considerate of pool users to feel proprietorial about the lane they’re using and to employ various stratagems to deter you from joining them. You loiter self-consciously at the start of their lane (clearly the most appropriate one for your swimming ability and currently, the least busy) waiting expectantly for some acknowledgement that yes, they’d be happy to share the water with you, but they maintain a stony indifference to you, increasing their speed and splash as if to suggest that this is actually a High Medium lane, totally unsuitable for you. So you turn to the next lane (also a Medium) where two young women are, with great hilarity, relating their social exploits of the previous evening. They have piled drink bottles, swimming accessories, and meticulously handwritten copies of their training routines to form a wall that you will have to climb over at your peril, before rudely interrupting their very important conversation, in order to reach a lane which seems otherwise unoccupied. Then there is the aforementioned subjectivity of the lane designations - What is fast? – and the overriding temptation to occupy an empty lane even if it’s designated fast and your pace is... well, glacial.

This is where some firm direction, albeit diplomatic, is required from pool management. You know, like:

“I’m sorry sir, but this is a swimming pool, not a walking track; you’ll have to move out of the fast lane before there’s an accident.”

Or

“Okay kids, the play lane ends at the rope, so you can’t swim under it and make rude faces at the lap swimmers above you.” Or

“Excuse me madam, but if you’d like to catch up with your long lost friend we have provided a coffee lounge right next to the gym and I notice there’s quite a few free tables ...”

Or

“Sir, just because you’re wearing a snorkel and don’t need to raise your head, you still have a responsibility to look where you are in relation to other swimmers in the lane.”

It is not as though there aren’t guidelines posted, with accompanying illustrations, around the pool:

• Choose the lane commensurate with your ability
• Ensure the other swimmer/s has/have seen you enter the lane
• If they are faster than you let them push off before you
• Keep to the left of the black line (including your right arm as you stroke)
• Tap the swimmer in front of you gently on the foot if you wish to pass and the right lane is clear
• Having passed them don’t then cut them off
• If you are having a rest stand to the side of the lane to allow the approaching swimmer to turn
• Swim freestyle.

Common sense really, if a little un-nuanced. You see by now I’ve negotiated the piranha tank of lane choice and taken the plunge. (Hmmm… Lynx in the water too). My lane mate is a long way away and so off I go, stroking evenly and economically, hugging the lane divider to my left. But my mate has goggle fog and is ploughing towards me like a runaway barge with no apparent awareness of the sanctity of the black line. Like an old Batman movie, “Thwack!” goes their heavy right arm into my head and “Splat!” go my goggles into their snorkel. What the...? This is shaping up like the 1956 Olympic Water Polo Final: in this context I see myself as the Hungarian: if blood is spilt it won’t be my fault. But before I can land a blow I realise my adversary is at least in his ‘eighties, so I just might be the Russian after all. We both splutter apologies of sorts and I move to the next lane.

Only one swimmer. He’s big, genial and has no idea the amount of lane space he occupies or water he displaces with each sledgehammer stroke. To share this lane will be seriously life threatening.

Again I move sideways. This looks more promising. My new partner is utterly self-contained, gliding swan-like through the barely disturbed water. However she is just a little slower than me, so as I approach her gently flailing feet I follow guidelines and graze her big toe with the tip of my finger before veering right to overtake. But what’s this? She jack-knifes and confronts me with a look of outrage and disgust. She’s about to call the police? I gape and splutter in apologetic bewilderment, truly out of my depth. Another sideways movement is necessary.

Now I am in a lane with a power swimmer; his look-at-me style is certainly impressive, if a little mechanical. I decide on an aid to span some of the gap between us, so I insert a pullbuoy between my buttocks. To the novice this seems quite unnatural. My bottom rises and my head sinks, but I do my best to focus on “improving my stroke.” But just as the Thorpedo is about to surge past me, the pullbuoy, like an enema in retreat, shoots free from its moorings and biffs him in the nose. To his credit he barely notices. He scythes through the water, while I, recovering my dignity, gently chug. Perhaps the discrepancy between us is so wide there might a workable accommodation? At least a few laps go by without further mishap mainly because I, again following the guidelines, graciously cede him right of way. However this precarious equilibrium comes undone when I unwittingly cut across the trajectory of his tumble turn and the two of us are thrown together in a crocodilian death roll: the water seethes and churns, heads clash, limbs fly in all directions and even the somnambulant pool attendant springs into action.

I’m done. Funky Trunks sagging perilously, I haul myself from the pool (a crane would be helpful), collect all my training aids and stagger to the change rooms. The soccer team has finished a moment before me so the showers are all occupied, bench space and hooks all taken. Squinting from the chlorine which has penetrated my biofuse goggles, I limp soggily past the front desk where my friend the Aqua Hub attendant, back from his fag, farewells me sincerely with a “Have a nice day!” Somewhere in the ether I imagine I hear a heavenly snigger: they kill us for their sports. I make it to the car and park my wet bottom on the cold vinyl seat. I will go home and see if I can stay afloat in a hot bath.