Maybe it’s because I spent my childhood enduring the moss-covered sub-arctic public pools of the UK, where you’d acquire a verruca before you’d donned your goggles, but the Australian public pool is my happy place. Little brings me more joy than a few laps under the vast Aussie sky. That is, however, until summertime arrives.
In summer public pool etiquette seems to disappear faster than a six-year-old’s icy pole. Is it not enough to have to emerge post-swim like a penguin from an oil slick with the onset of an ear infection? Apparently not.
Maybe it’s the Brit in me that holds a quiet respect for those who know and accept the limitations of their own capabilities, but nothing gets my goat like the overconfident overtaker. You know the one: spotted over-zealously stretching poolside before belly flopping into the lane. All splash and ego. Determined to get past you but not quite making it, instead knocking you sideways in the shallow end.
Only once have I summoned up the courage to say something to a wannabe Ian Thorpe. I regretted it instantly. “Why would you do that?” I exclaimed, as a flailing arm attempted to swat me like a fly. “THIS IS MY LANE!” he retorted. Of course, silly me.
But my irritation is not solely reserved for the slow overtakers. I hold equal disdain for those who cut me off at the turn knowing they’ve planned a slow doggy paddle for the next 50 metres. Or those who renounce the leisure lane in favour of bobbing about in the swim lanes like pygmy seahorses. The parent who thinks a 35C day and packed lane is the perfect time to teach little Timmy how to swim laps alongside them. And don’t get me started on those who jump blindly in with the confidence of Kyle Chalmers and an enthusiasm for decapitation to rival Henry VIII.
Last weekend however, I may have met my gripe-mate in a coveted double lane. “I don’t get it!” he raged, having narrowly avoided being taken out by a self-assured butterflyer. “Why do they swim so close when they have all this space?!” Possibly seeing the shocked look on my face, he swiftly followed with “or perhaps I’m just a grumpy old man?”
“Perhaps” I replied.
