People at the Pool - First Draft

A swimming pool may seem like a fairly mundane place for social observations but if you take the advice of William Henry Davies and take the time to stand and stare, you will find that a public swimming pool is host to all types of men, women, children and oddballs.  On a recent excursion to the River Park Leisure Centre here in Winchester I must have come across nearly every type of social misfit that it is possible to see in the space of an hour!

The first oddity I came across was just outside the entrance of the centre. Imagine for a moment, a woman wearing one of the most elegant cream suits you have ever seen, a fitted jacket, pencil skirt, and a pair of killer heels. This may not sound like a particularly odd sight in Winchester and normally I would agree but this was an exception. This woman, in all her grace and elegance, was riding down the street on a micro scooter. I have to explain that she was not accompanied by a child as you might expect in order to make the scene more acceptable! It appears that this was simply her preferred mode of transportation.

Upon entering the swimming pool area I collided with a man who was leaving and admittedly I was hoping against hope that he was wearing a woollen sweater and was not in fact someone with enough hair to be presented to the world as the missing link!

A quick glimpse around revealed that the mixture for a day at the pool is:

·         A handful of ‘serious athletes’

·         A dash of mothers and babies

·         A sprinkle of the elderly

·         And the cherry on the cake – a pair of ‘moobs’

Once all these ingredients are placed in the mixing bowl that is a public swimming pool, the result is as hectic as a scene from a ‘Where’s Wally?’ book.

Admittedly I am not a serious athlete and spend most of my time at the pool simply floating around letting my thoughts wonder in the way that most tend to do. I was there with a friend who was also mainly floating as we hoped the waves from other people swimming past us would move us slightly so we appeared to actually be progressing further down the lane!

In fact I was remaining so still it is a wonder that the lifeguard did not think I was having some kind of serious problem. Although that would have involved him climbing from his big chair – or as I am sure he would think of it, pedestal. There were points where my friend and I were slightly worried that in the time we were taking accomplishing nothing, one of the babies in the mother and baby class would learn to swim independently and come swimming past us, spraying up water in a blur of armbands and huggies.

Oddly this was not enough to deter me from possibly taking another trip to the pool but for now I have had more than my fair share of being in a confined space with such a varied mix of Winchester’s population.