Keeping Fit

If you’re wondering about time lines this happened almost 20 years after my encounter with my favourite landlady.

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Due to my job I never really stayed anywhere for very long and I got into the habit of living out of a suitcase, when I turned forty I felt I needed to make a base for myself: somewhere that was mine, decorated in my style, where I could relax and shut the rest of the world out, if only for a day. I’d spent nearly twenty years working all over the UK and I decided to live somewhere I liked rather than somewhere fashionable. When I was offered a predominantly fixed base job, training the next generation of electronic equipment installers in a city I liked I took the plunge and bought a house.

It was far larger than I needed, I had nothing to put in it, I didn’t know how I wanted it to be but it was home. The house, sorry my home, was located in an older area of the city that had at the time of building been the outskirts but was now hedged in a bit by newer developments, although less than two minutes walk from my front door was a huge city park which was nice. The house was built in 1894, in that grandiose Victorian style, with tall ceilings and big rooms, built for the well off, new moneyed, middle class with aspirations. As is the case in many UK cities, because of their size it meant that the majority of these houses were bought by property agencies that promptly turned them into student bedsits, but there are worse people to have as neighbours than students.

The area when built had everything to offer the well off gentleman including excellent local amenities. To be honest, I was beginning to feel a few aches and pains and part of the reason I bought it was the close proximity to a recently refurbished, community partnership funded, swimming pool (that means it’s open for as many hours of the day as possible). I found that swimming relaxed me more than any other exercise I’d ever tried, however I suppose recognising my entry into middle age I wanted to prove I wasn’t over the hill and pushed myself. I started work at 8:30 am and was home every day by 4:00 pm, so my after work routine became a good long swim, a sauna and a cooling off period, OK a snooze, on one of the plentiful sun loungers around the pool.

My father always told me not to shit on my own doorstep and since living there I’d followed that advice, consequently my encounters with the fairer sex had ended. This sounds boastful but since being seduced by my landlady when I was 23 I’d rarely gone more than a few weeks without finding somebody who wanted to share my bed, usually women older than me or Mums who wanted a fling with a better endowed man than the one they lived with. To cut a long story short, due to my abstinence I was almost constantly horny and as such was beginning to notice the female students who used the pool, fit, young and as it seemed afraid of nothing. As I said I’d never really hooked up with young women always finding it easier or more convenient to stick to 30 plus so this for me was new territory.

Obviously going to the pool everyday meant I knew most of the lifeguards who worked there, I don’t know why lifeguards are mostly female but they seem to be (there’s a tip if you’re looking for a fit girlfriend who is comfortable with her body). I’d found that at the weekend if I wanted to swim I had to get there for 7:00 am or 7:00 pm. In the mornings the pool was full of serious swimmers but in the evening it was all but empty. From 7:00 pm they cut the lifeguards down to one if it was quiet and that was usually a part time guard who, as it turned out, were almost always students.

Now I’m sorry to be boring… the practicalities of swimming every day… when you see men in speedos on the beach they’re posing, old men in speedos is worse, I think it was a corporate Ford idea that “if you’ve got it, flaunt it, if you haven’t flaunt it more.” If you swim everyday you either have baggy shorts that take a couple of days to dry, bleach and fall apart unless you wash them after every swim, or you wear speedos, they’re dry in an hour or so, aren’t damaged by chlorinated water, have no drag in the water and as I wasn’t in bad shape (flaunting it more) I opted for them.

It was a Monday afternoon when “it” happened. I’d had a hectic weekend, slept very little (my father was unwell), got home late on Sunday, didn’t sleep all that well, worked, and went for a swim at about 6. I’d really pushed myself and turned in a sub 30 minute mile. As usual I’d had a long sauna, a quick shower, and lay down on a sun lounger to cool down, however on this Monday I fell asleep. I honestly don’t recall anything until I was awoken by a lifeguard shaking me, I came instantly awake wondering where the fire was, they normally give everybody plenty of space so this must be urgent.

“Look there’s been a complaint, could you cover it up please.”

I was still a bit dazed from the sleep because I didn’t understand what she was talking about.