Ladies night
Tuesday night is ladies night at my local pool and so, even though I’m dog tired, I swing my bag onto my back and get ready to leave the house. “Is Ladies night different than other nights?” you ask. “Yeah, there are half the number of people there!” I wink, as I head towards the door. But it’s only half the truth.
On Ladies night, much of the pool is commandeered by stout women of a certain age, in sensible swimming costumes, clutching foam dumbells. They bob, lunge and jiggle along to an assortment of 1960s pop songs blasted out on a mobile speaker: “My My My Delilah!” Tom Jones wails. I jam my ear plugs tighter into my ears. The instructor, who is no spring chicken herself, all energetic and motivational, stands on the poolside dry as a bone, miming the next sequence of steps for her submerged class to perform. I swim up and down in the adjacent lane, trying to avoid being kicked by the forest of legs that are enthusiastically obeying instructions in slow motion, wafting back and forth. Kicks, squats, lunges; things involving waving arms about — and all without getting wet hair.
Meanwhile in the ‘laned’ half of the pool, on Ladies night swimmers appear in pairs. Some swimming friends work hard together pacing up and down, focussed and intent. But some others have come for a more social kind of an evening: time spent swimming side-by-side, and lounging and chatting while cluttering up the shallow end, seems to be on the agenda rather than having any kind of a work out.
On Ladies night, women turn up in costumes that are way too skimpy, and swim indecent breaststroke in front of you — displaying wobbling bits that nobody should ever have to see. Sheesh.
On Ladies night, having said that, I find that generally that women swim up and down more, and stand and huff and puff less. There is more of an air of decorous and gentle endeavour, and less of an air of frenzied sprinting and thrashing and having to spend time desperately wheezing and recuperating. Of course for every rule there is an exception. There are women who are jerks too. Men don’t have the monopoly on that.
Mostly, on Ladies night I can swim on my own, not a care in the world, emptying my head. I swim on Ladies night because it’s quiet and calm and I love watching the forest of stout ankles alongside me and hearing the rubbish croony music and giggling at the bone dry instructor. I even love the swimming friends lolling about — sometimes I’m jealous of them, even. I love the whole sweet, gentle, non threatening nature of it all.
But most of all I just love a lane to myself.
