Learning to swim

Learning to swim

BY BARRY SHEPPARD

I well remember our trips to the outdoor pool. I attended the primary school in Abbey Road and can still remember waving to steam trains going across the embankment that used to divide us from the 'swamp', as we called it, on the other side where we had loads of expeditions going after frogs although we were often scared off by swans. In the mid and late 1960s, we used to go once a week to the outdoor pool to learn to swim, an excellent initiative for schoolchildren but sometimes the temperature of the pool was a bit beyond the pale.

The figures for that day were always chalked up on a small blackboard by the entrance to the pool and so you knew as soon as you arrived whether it was going to be a pleasant swimming lesson or not. The teachers, needless to say, used to wrap up warm and stay on the side of the pool offering encouragement and instruction instead of going in themselves, a far cry from now, when, as I take my offspring for their lessons, I'm expected to get in as well although to be fair, the pools are somewhat warmer these days.

Those of us who had not learned to swim had to wear a hideous one-piece costume that had polystyrene floats stuck down the side to keep us buoyant. As we completed each width, under the supervision of Mr Palmer or Miss Gorton from the primary school, one float was removed. I had one triumphant morning when I went into the pool wearing one of the dreaded costumes and swam six widths causing all my floats to be removed one by one and Mr Palmer declaring that I was now officially a swimmer. I can well remember two of my closest friends, Keith Abraham and Tony Wilson, shouting encouragement as I neared the final stretch. Happy days.

The superintendent of the pool was a chap called Johnny Kettle, perhaps a relative to the Kettles in Recreation Road, who always seemed to be wearing white trousers. He was very tanned, no doubt as a result of all that outdoor work, and he chatted with everyone. When I first went there, the pool surround was entirely of grass. There was no paved area as your photo on the web site shows, and as a result the pool was often very muddy, especially late in the day, as bathers used to bring dirt and grass into the water. It became quite hazardous swimming and the water tasted awful. This was in the days before chlorination, and bits of grass got into your mouth. Ugh!

I well remember the fountain in your picture. The water in it was always freezing cold. Rumour had it that it came directly from a borehole and thence to the pool system, but I don't think that was the case. Whatever the truth was, it was freezing cold and could take your breath away if you stood underneath it, which many of us did for a dare. It was reckoned to be a sign of manhood if you could stay there for more than a minute with all of your mates counting off the seconds at the top of their voices to make sure you didn't cheat.

There are lots of other tricks we used to get up to, like swimming lengthwise from one end of the pool to the other while at the same time keeping an eye on the church tower which can be seen in your photo. Then there was the day they got it all wrong with the new chlorine system and everyone started complaining and then the time when all the new tiles fell off inside the pool because workmen had used the wrong adhesive. But it was all part of the experience and what fun we had because whatever happened, we always carried on swimming.