Taking the plunge

When I was age 10, I wanted to learn how to swim. Not just doggy paddle, I wanted to be able to swim quickly and hold my breath underwater, like a mermaid.

My friend Sarah and I were signed up to swimming lessons by our parents at the big pool near us called Warrior Square. To a 10 year old, it was enormous. The main pool looked miles long, and had a long, tiered gallery at the side where our mums could watch us swim and talk about The Bill and Casualty.

We didn't have any swimming badges, so we weren't allowed lessons in the big pool just yet. Instead, we had to join the 6 and 7 year old's in the kiddy pool, which had mosaics of starfish and whales on the walls, and was so shallow the water only came up to our thighs. But we didn't mind. The water was hotter in there.

A girl in our class at School, Nicola Gray, had a brother who was taking lessons in the big pool. He was asked by the teacher to demonstrate the breast stroke for us all. I remember looking at him in awe as he gracefully swam up and down the length of the pool, his long legs expanding like frogs, his head hovering at the same height the whole way. How did he keep it so still when his body was bobbing up and down? He had a smug look on his face as he swam, a sense of 'swimming superiority'. Well, I would too if I could swim as well as that.

It wasn't long before Sarah and I were told we were good enough to leave and have lessons in the big pool. The lessons were on the far right hand side, across the width of the pool. There were three different lanes for lessons - the further left the lane, the better the swimmer you were and the higher badges you could go for. We were introduced to our new teacher, an elderly woman called Pam who had short, white hair and wore a baggy Adidas tracksuit, and got into the water.

A few weeks later, and after getting our 200m swimming badge, a new boy wearing blue Speedos joined our lane. His name was Reese, and he had a slimy look about him. I didn't like swimming after him, because I had it in my head that he had really smelly feet, and I thought that if I was behind him, he'd make all the water smelly and I'd be swimming face first into it and all his smelly water would go into my mouth . I'd make an excuse to my teacher, like 'just re adjusting my goggles, Miss!', so that someone else would go in front of me. He wasn't very good at swimming either, and so when Sarah and I moved up to the next lane, I was glad to see he stayed put. Someone else could have his smelly water.

There was a diving pool at Warrior Square too, and as we swam up and down in our lessons, we could see other children having lessons. They'd tip toe to the edge of the springboard, wobble and flap their arms like the teacher showed them, and fall in the water. Occasionally you'd see the teacher demonstrate and do a dive with a spin from the board, and you could tell it was a good dive because hardly any splash would come off the water. We asked our mums if we could do diving lessons too, and they said yes.

My swimming costume was getting very stretched and see through and had bobbly bits all over it, so my mum took me to JD sports to get a new one ready for my new lessons. I wanted a really bright, colourful one. I found a Speedo one, which was navy blue at the bottom and faded into a sunset orange and yellow at the top. I loved it. I felt like a professional athlete wearing it, with it's racer back and sports logo.

When I tried it on at the shop, it was perfect. When I got home, I eagerly tried it on again, like any young girl does with new clothes. Except, I noticed there was a big hole in the back of it. It was part of the design, it was meant to have a big hole... but, well it worried me. When I pulled the swimming costume on and it was halfway up, my bum poked out the big hole in the back, and my sister and mum roared in fits of laughter at me. I laughed along with them, at first, but then I started to worry. What if as I dived, a rush of water would pull my swimming costume down, and my bum would be on show for everyone in the pool to see?! I didn't like my swimming costume anymore.

For my first few diving lessons, my teacher asked why I was pulling my legs up high and wrapping my arms around myself as soon as I hit the water. Even at age twelve, I felt far too embarrassed to say 'because I don't want everyone to see my big bum'.

And so without telling her why, I asked my mum to buy me a new swimming costume for Christmas. I got a dark blue one, which had normal straps, and more importantly, no gaping holes.

The first thing we learnt was a standing jump. You had to stand 6 feet away from the edge of the springboard, take 3 slow strides, jump on the spot on the end pushing your arms down, and then jump again into the water with your arms high above your head. For a simple jump, there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary arm flapping and stepping going on, but we spent two whole lessons learning how to perfect it.

"How was your diving lesson tonight Jennifer?" my mum would ask in the car on the drive home.
"Oh yeah, it was good thanks. We learnt how to jump."

I could tell she didn't think she was getting her money's worth.

But soon we learnt how to do other things. There was the pike; a jump where you bring your straightened legs gracefully infront of you, touch your toes, and then straighten your body as you enter the water. Now, I was never the most flexible child, so I never actually managed to touch my toes, or even keep my legs straight for the matter, so my pike tended to look more like a pufferfish.

Then there were three types of dive; one, where you place your hands together, bend at the hips, and simply fall into the water (I was good at this one), a normal standing dive, whereby you had to travel as little distance as possible, jumping high in the air before turning and aiming your body at the water (slightly harder to get the hang of - I always ended up at the wrong end of the pool with water up my nose), and a 'tuck-dive', where, in the middle of a normal standing dive, you'd tuck your legs like a canon ball, quick un-tuck them and then finish off the dive (the hardest of the three, mostly because I'd often forget I was doing a dive, and just do a cannon into the water and splash my teacher and drench her tracksuit bottoms. I always stood the ground that she worked in a pool, she knew she was going to get wet. It was hardly my fault.)

One of the hardest things to get to grips with was a back dive. You had to stand on the edge of the diving pool, with your heels over the edge, hands straight up in air, and bend your back the wrong way so that you landed, hands first, into the water. It was mind boggling. Just like when I was learning how to high-jump at school, and I couldn't for the life of me understand how you could run straight at the high jump bar, but end up jumping backwards over it.

At first, there were a lot of falling backwards into the water, from everyone. It seemed no one else quite understood how we were meant to do it either. In the end, our teacher used to stand next to us with her arm like a rigid horizontal pole on our backs, and make us jump over it.

All the other children before me managed it fine, and jumped over her arm into a perfect back dive. Trust me to be the one that forgets to jump over it, but instead jumps into it, and drags poor Pam and her Adidas tracksuit into the water with me.

Although she gave me quite evil stares for the next five minutes, it actually worked out well in our favour, because now she was drenched, she saw no reason why she couldn't perfectly demonstrate the back dive for us so we could see what a real one looked like (it's very hard doing a dive you've never seen before), and then even a few other fancy ones later.

Three lessons later, and we'd perfected the back dive from the side of the pool that we could do it from the springboard. This was a much stranger sensation, as it takes a few more seconds to hit the water, everything was upside down, and you had a constant fear you were going to do a loop-de-loop and accidentally knock out your front teeth on the board.

Now, I have to tell you that learning to do a dive with a spin in the middle isn't half as glamorous as it looks on television. You have to jump upright into the air, tuck in your legs quickly to make you spin round, and then as soon as my teacher yells 'NOW',  un-stretch your legs into a dive pose and enter the water. The very first time I tried, I stretched out just a little bit too late, and landed hard on the waters surface on the back of my neck. Necks are not meant to be landed on. I suffered a two day migraine after that. That was not a good day.

Over the years, my diving lessons on the whole went very well. I could do everything my teacher had taught me, and do them all rather well if I'm totally honest. But unfortunately, I also discovered along the way that I had a horrible fear of heights. I hadn't really been aware of this fear before hand - I mean, I knew I didn't really like tall trees, but I'd never connected two and two together. After all, I wasn't jumping from the top of a tall tree. My teacher told me that in order to progress, I'd have to start doing proper dives from the higher boards. The ones where you have to climb steps. A lot of steps.

In truth, I managed quite a few dives from the second board. It was about 3m high and was also a springboard, and our teacher got into the habit of making us do a dive from it at the end of each lesson. Walking to the end, each step made the board wobble to and fro and when the rails either side of me stopped, I'd shuffle to the end, never taking my feet off the board. I always chose the falling dive, because it was easier to simply fall into the water than do lots of jumping and risk catapulting myself onto the hard tiled surface by the side of the pool. I didn't fancy another headache.

Once, I'm proud to say, I even jumped from the top board. I'd psyched myself up to do it all lesson; everyone else in my class had already done it, so there was no going back. A little boy in front of me called Michael walked to the edge and simply 'plopped' off the edge into the water - he made it look so easy. Well, there was no going back now. It was strange jumping from a board that was springy. I stood 6 feet away from the edge, took the three steps, did the flappy arms thing, and then finally took a step off the edge.

It was a long fall, the hairs on my arms stood on end as the air rushed past my wet skin. All I remember was that my body skewered as I fell, so that I went in at a jaunty angle and I landed with a hard 'slap' onto the waters surface. I tumbled around in the water, plummeting to the bottom of the pool with a quick 'whoosh!' Well, it hurt a bit, but I'd done it. I'd actually done it!

I was so proud of myself. I'd jumped off the top board even though I was scared of heights. But I think the thing I was most happy about at that moment was the fact that during that jump, I wasn't wearing the original swimming costume my mum had bought me.