Leisure

In a rare moment of decisive clarity, I resolved about a year ago take my oldest daughter swimming. I had no intention of excluding my younger daughter, you understand: it's just that she didn't exist at the time. I think swimming is an extremely useful skill to learn, as well as being a good, wholesome activity for a parent to share with their children. I have fond memories of struggling heroically out of bed in my youth to spend occasional Saturday mornings at Riverside Ice & Leisure with my own Dad.

All of which adds to my sense of shame that it was only last week when this dream was finally made manifest. I have had some time off work with no real commitments to fill it, so my wife and I decided that we would devote as much of each day as possible to just having a nice time with our daughters. High on the list of ways to achieve this was a trip to the local baths, as I believe they were known in olden days. So last Thursday, having procrastinated for twelve months, we suddenly agreed that the time had come. Within ten minutes all four of us sported the swimming costumes which had been gradually and optimistically acquired over the past year, and we were out the door within ten minutes.

The leisure centre we went to seemed to have had its pools designed with families in mind. One small, standard pool with the usual depth and corners and whatnot, was off limits; in use by school children. Adjacent to this was a larger, roundish affair, whose depth increased from zero to lots in direct proportion to the ages of its intended occupants. It was essentially a manmade beach with grown ups (who take their leisure seriously and do not wish to be disturbed by children or their parents) at one end and children (with parents) at the other. Having briefly exhausted the third option - a cold, shallow toddler pool featuring two slides, whose only contribution to our day was to provide our eldest with an unwanted introduction to having her head under water - we took up a position in the fake beach environment.

My wife assumed control of our eldest while I was happy to be left holding the baby. We both bobbed around with our respective charges until we settled upon depths of water with which all concerned were relatively comfortable. Our original child is just old enough to have developed a healthy sense of suspicion about her environment. As such she was the more nervous of the two at this new endeavour. After a number of worried minutes, during which the rudimentary concrete animal heads provided a necessary distraction, she eventually came to terms with being in the water, to the extent that I look forward to furthering her aquatic education.

Our youngest turned out to be a natural. Less perturbed by any awareness of danger, she baulked at first at the temperature of the water, but then quickly recovered a sense of relaxed nonchalance. Before very long she was leaning forward in my arms and instinctively kicking her legs behind her. I was struggling to hold on to her. This must be how the young Ian Thorpe's parents felt. I should clarify that my daughter's feet are in quite satisfactory proportion to the rest of her body. I wonder if Mr and Mrs Thorpe were worried about this when he was four months old.

After relative calm had remained for a while we decided that we should quit while we were ahead. Our strategically positioned towels were quickly employed to keep the children warm on the trip to the changing rooms. Upon arriving at the leisure centre we had been impressed by the provision of family changing rooms. These turned out to be slightly larger cubicles with a handy 'bench' (or 'low shelf') running along one side. It was after returning to the changing room that the thermal inadequacy of the towels was revealed. This was when the screaming began. Initially it was our youngest daughter wailing at the sudden drop in temperature, but her volume was quickly subsumed by the increasingly panicked exclamations my wife and I exchanged as we struggled to get everyone dried and dressed in clothes which we COULDN'T BLOODY FIND.

Seriously. My first piece of advice to anybody attempting a similar excursion is to ensure that your post-swim bag is packed in an extremely well organised fashion. You must be able to instantly retrieve each nappy and item of clothing in a meticulously pre-ordained sequence. This is the only way in which you will avoid a level of anxiety which threatens to overshadow any fun you may recently have experienced. We just about escaped this stressful fate, thanks in no small part to our older daughter, whose worry at the situation was visible in her eyes, but which she somehow suppressed in order to offer us an exemplary - if somewhat uncharacteristic - display of calm. By following her lead we were able to get dressed, warm up a bit and escape unharmed, still able to describe our morning as an enjoyable success.

With careful planning we may even repeat it. In a year or so.