Number 1 friend just came round. She looked rather dishevelled. I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking: crikey, camp really took it out of you, love! The kids wanted me to go swimming with them, she said. Of all the days, when I’m on my knees after camp, they ask today. Aha, I thought to myself. That explains why you look a bit ropey and my second thought was: oh god, no. Anything but swimming! Soft play (when they were younger), the park, even Diggerland but please don’t ask me to get in a bloody swimming pool!
Firstly there’s the faff of getting the gear together. It’s at this point the goggle black hole resurfaces. I see goggles when I’m tidying the girls’ rooms. I find them in bathroom cupboards and in the pockets of the car, but when you are about to go swimming there are no flipping goggles to be found, anywhere.
Next, there is the costume…all mine are chlorine damaged aka slightly see through, but I forget this until I am about to go swimming.
Then there is the hair: leg, underarm and pubic. Way too much to deal with when the kids are all waiting downstairs, ready to go swimming. So you scrape a razor around like a madman on a mower, hoping that will do. The reality of this botch job is a rash and some bleeding cuts here and there.
You get to the pool and pay…how much!!! Seriously: to have to share changing rooms with kids (and potentially men) looking under the door, to share showers, with hair clogging up the plug holes and the worst bit: TO SWIM!!!
I looked at number 1 friend, make up less and without her usual blow dry – still beautiful but with that, ‘I’ve just been swimming’ look about her and I reminded myself to just keep saying, ‘no’.