genuflexion's end

Despite some chest-thumping posts a while back I've been lazy the last few months. Been to the pool a fair bit, but only to play around with the kids awhile then find a sunny spot where I can watch them carry on without me. Too busy sucking on kreteks and guzzling red wine to look after my health/fitness. Then I get anxious about said health/fitness and consequently smoke/drink even more ... part of it is that I fell out of love with the Leichhardt pool. It's pretty and all, but very crowded and, I don't know, a bit too gentrified for my liking. So a couple of weeks ago we went off to check out the Ashfield pool. Not pretty, not pretty at all, a bare concrete pit in blinding sunlight with the raised embankment of the railway line at one end and tiered seating on either side of the main pool like the swimming pools of my youth. But far more comfortable to be at. The kids loved it and so did I. Plus, half the price of entry.

So I bit the bullet and went back there today to see what the damage was. A lane to myself, half in sun, half in shade. Sun up, shade down, I liked that. The water, I think, a degree or two warmer than at Leichhardt; or maybe that's just because the air temperature is higher. 25 C today (the air, I mean). First length, you always feel like Ian Thorpe. Second length, like yourself on an average day. Third, you're struggling and by the fourth, sinking ... but that didn't happen. I picked up on the fourth and basically sailed through the next sixteen until I'd swum a kilometre. Hell, I could have gone on. There's graffiti on the black guide line at the bottom of the pool. Long lines of indecipherable script interspersed with big fat cocks-and-balls. Lots of them. They looked quite strange, swelling and sliding with the motion of the water. Nice pool, I said to the attendant who was tightening the lane markers. Yeah, it's got a certain something, he allowed.

On the subject of health ... a major worry at the moment is knees. Mine don't seem to work properly anymore. I broke my right patella in a motorbike accident at eighteen and this injury has troubled me intermittently ever since; but now my left knee has seized up. It happened while I was cab driving earlier this year and I don't know why. Long hours of immobility lying half flexed while the other leg worked the pedals seems to have had some deleterious effect. This is of particular concern because unless some miracle supervenes I'll be driving again soon. Oh, well. I can still walk, run, skip, hop, jump, stand still, sit, drive, lie ... the one thing I can't do any more is kneel.