Remember swimming widths? Probably not if you’re under 20, or even 30, unless you have access to a private pool. But when I learned to swim back in the 1970s it was perfectly normal. Great, in fact, for any child unable to stand in the deep end, since it meant you could practise swimming in the shallows instead.
Today widths have been all but outlawed, with leisure centres across Britain introducing lane swimming, in many cases across most of their main pools. So you have fast, medium and slow, or fast, medium and private lessons. Or, if you’re lucky and it’s Saturday afternoon, fast, medium and casual swim – meaning one lane, or perhaps half the pool lengthways, is reserved for those wishing to do something other than lengths.
Before the comments thread rises up against me, I’d better write very fast that I have nothing against lane swimmers. But after a summer of getting wet with my children, in the sea as well as pools, I’ve become cross about the way swimming for fun – as in playing games, jumping in, doing handstands, diving for locker keys, racing each other – has been squeezed out of public pools.
In my local sports centre, which I won’t name as I’ve already complained to the council, it was not unusual during the summer holidays to find up to 40 adults and kids sharing a third of the only pool. Since non-swimmers are confined to the shallow end, this meant most of these 40 people were in fact crammed into a sixth of the total space. Meanwhile a handful of adults shared the remaining two-thirds, swimming up and down behind the ropes.
This was clearly extreme and hopefully a mistake. But I think it shows up a trend whereby play in pools is squeezed out in favour of exercise and training. This might seem fair enough to adults – especially those who want to get fit, and tut or roll their eyes at teenagers splashing and pushing or even flirting in the pool. But it’s not fair to children for whom pools are important places to spend time with their parents and each other (away from iPads, TVs and other distractions), especially in winter, when playgrounds can be wet, cold and even closed.
In London, where I live, what I will call the indoor water-play shortage seems especially acute. This is weird, as our outdoor swimming and paddling facilities are good. But not only have our public pools shrunk and become more regimented as a result of council cuts, and not only have the diving boards on which I had hours of fun in the 1980s practically disappeared, but we lack the private palaces of splash-based fun known as water parks as well.
In case you’ve never been to one, these are places with wave machines, water jets, spa pools, pirate ships, slides, and sometimes a storeroom full of floats and toys to chuck into the action for certain sessions. Northern resorts specialise in them, as they’re favoured by families on rainy beach holidays.
There used to be a “leisure pool” – a less flashy, council-run alternative with a wave machine, toys and a simulated beach – in London. Fulham New Pools opened in around 1981, if memory serves me (though Hammersmith and Fulham council haven’t yet responded to a request for a few facts, such as when and why it closed). I was thrilled by this place as a child, with its beach-style slope into the water in place of steps, and machine-generated waves crashing on to a make-believe shore. What a brilliant resource, especially for children who don’t get to the seaside every year.
London councils, please could we have a new one?
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