ABSTRACT
When I was about eight years old, my dad would take my brother and me to the local swimming pool every Saturday morning. It was a regular event which marked the start of the weekend, but was something I looked forward to all week. It was time to be with my dad, as he was always busy during the weekdays, and a time for swimming which was fun time. Swimming at school was ok, but it wasn't the same as going to the public pool on a Saturday morning. This was special. The pool opened its doors at 8.30 and we would always make sure we were down there by 8.15 so that we could be first in the queue. Not that there was usually anyone else there, but just in case. I would always hurry everyone along as I wanted to be there first. My reason was so that I could enjoy one of the highlights of the visit — being the first one in the pool. My brother would sometimes put up a challenge and try to race me, but I had developed an art of being able to get changed in minutes. Clothes were off and thrown in the basket before my dad had finished paying for our tickets. It was an old Victorian swimming pool where the changing rooms were downstairs, arranged in rows of cubicles with a central area where you would leave your basket of clothing with the attendant who would exchange it for a rubber bracelet with a number on. I would always put this around my ankle as I didn't like it moving around my skinny wrist. I could never remember the face of the attendant, only a glimpse of a hand from which I snatched the wristband. I was too concerned to get up the steps to the pool as quickly as possible and be the one to have the first go at breaking the seal of the water. There was something magical about the water when it was completely still. It was fresh, calm and unbearably enticing. By getting there first, not only did it feel like the pool was mine — but I had the choice of how I would break the seal. I could dive, in an attempt to enter with as little disturbance as possible and then be able to swim underneath the still surface. Or, in most cases, I could do a massive bomb and try to make as much disruption to the stillness as possible. Regardless of how I chose to enter the water, it was a time when the pool belonged to me. Having my own personal water world 2would only last for a minute or so until my brother or some other intruder jumped in. But it was a moment I savoured and knew I could repeat next Saturday.
