If you chose to exercise, would you choose to swim?

2008-06-06T10:43:31Z

The Olympic Legacy plan, announced today, promises free swimming for all by 2012 (well, hopes for, rather than promises) because that’s the activity most people would take up, if any. Read more here.

Really? We’d play table tennis. Or do those dancing computer games.

What about you? What’s your local pool like? How will it be when it’s full of OAPs and children enjoying their free access way before you? Will you be more likely to go there if it’s free? To really get in the spirit of encouraging people to get more active for 2012 and beyond, would you walk there?

2008-06-06T12:08:09Z

Beware of red water, I say. But as a girl I know and love said the other night ‘blokes who swim always have fit bodies’. That alone is enough to make me endure early mornings and the faint smell of chlorine all day.

2008-06-06T12:11:50Z

I swim but only because my gym has a nice quiet pool. However I STRONGLY object to the fact that on weekend afternoons they have ‘family swim’ time so all the lovely mummies and daddies can bring their little darlings in to piss in said pool. Children piss in pools. FACT. I would not go near a public pool for this reason, even if free.

2008-06-06T21:44:46Z

I often take my little darling to the local pool for the express purpose of a good piss, nothing like a lovely warm wee wee in a chilly pool to put a smile on your face!

I digress. I don’t think I would go any more or any less if it was free, I’m not very good a swimming, I don’t like getting splashed, I don’t put my head under the water and I get very flustered if anyone accidently touches me while they swim past. Don’t talk to me about the changing rooms, horrible place that never have enough cubicles so you’re forced to get Mrs Mimsey out in public or stand there shivvering in your towel until a changing room becomes available….and then people think you’re weird because they all got naked and dryed themselves off and applied moisturiser BEFORE PUTTING ON THEIR PANTS!!! I DON’T WANT TO SEE IT! MOISTURISE AT HOME AND PUT IT AWAY!!! WE’RE BRITISH FOR GOD’S SAKE!

If I had my own private pool that would be a different story.

Did anyone see the Timeout thing on Lido’s this week?

Flange

2008-06-06T22:14:50Z

How many euphemisms can we fit into one thread?

Mrs Mimsey – I love that one – never heard it before. Awww
Flange – Last time I heard that was in an Ali G sketch
Badger – Like a beaver, only middle-aged

2008-06-07T00:34:13Z

Anything to make indulging in any kind of sport or exercise is a good thing in my book. The sooner the better. And once they’ve done that, make ANY council-run sport establishments free as well. There’s a running track near where I live in Hanwell and they have a small gym there which you pay £92 per annum to join. They should make it MUCH bigger, make it free and advertise it the length and breadth of the borough so as many people as poss get to use it. Then build shit-loads more of them.

Once they’ve done that, Gordon the Brown should remove VAT from all sports equipment, including bikes and bike trailers. I want to see the roads so full of bikes that everywhere looks like down-town Hanoi ten years ago.

While we’re at it, I want to see veggie seeds, compost and gardening tools VAT free and subsidised so that as many people as possible start growing their own grub. And that goes for all eco-technology such as solar panels etc.

Wouldn’t believe I’m saving up to buy a sports car would you…. (true!).

2008-06-07T17:44:52Z

I’m going to try and swim tomorrow, at Highbury Pool. The changing rooms are pretty ming but if I go early enough there shouldn’t be too many kids there.

A thought though – in the next year or so swimming will be free for OAPs and under 16s. So the pools will be full of wrinklies and kiddies. By the time they get round to open access for all, won’t we – the people in between – have buggered off to a privately owned, monthly expensive, wee-free, oasis of a pool elsewhere?

2008-06-17T10:49:58Z

I swim three times per week but at a swanky gym, rather than my local pool. Which is just as well really, as my local pool closed down because there’s too much asbestos in the roof, and the roof is falling to bits.

2008-06-17T11:16:24Z

Learning to swim can be a useful life skill, more so if you get to do it whilst dodging falling toxic debris.

Given the choice between learning to swim and drowning, yeah – swimming’s not a bad form of exercise.