Solar power

At Woking swimming pool. I hadn't been for years but Gill dragged me down there, promising loads of post swim endorphins. I managed a mile, cramping up towards the end. The analgesic effect of those endorphins has certainly helped ease my stiff neck but I don't feel quite so chemically happy as I'd hoped.

I used to swim a lot, taught at a young age by my step uncle, a man called Dennis Grimes, who, as the local schools swimming instructor for Dewsbury, taught many children of my generation in our town to swim. His method was to stand by the side of the pool with a long pole attached to a hoop. The hapless pupil had to set off for the deep end and he would keep the hoop just out of reach until it looked as if the learner really was about to sink, when he'd let them grab it.

I have a few friends who remember his lessons and one of them, Karen, has never quite got over the trauma of it all. I guess today such methods would be deemed cruel. He taught me to swim by getting in the water with me and moving my arms and legs in the kicks you needed for breaststroke. No-one would do that now, I expect, for all the kiddy-fiddling fears. It's a shame because it worked well and wasn't quite as daunting as the hoop. We didn't have shallow training pools at that time although there was a shallow end.

There wasn't any lane discipline either and, frankly, not much swimming on a Saturday morning when we had our lessons, just lots of kids jumping in and mucking about. That meant our twenty lengths at the end of the session were a bit chaotic, swimming around people. I swam almost every day, mostly with my cousin Andrew who was better than me and won the Yorkshire championships at breaststroke. Then, at age 11, when I moved to the grammar school, I gave it up, something I've always regretted. Well it's never too late to start again.