The H Factor

Natural Blues – Moby, Go

This morning I had a moment of bouncy spring madness and got up at 6.30am to go swimming. It was, rather unsurprising, wet and cold, and required me to bare my winter-pasty limbs in front of other people, quelle horreur. Although to be fair most of my fellow swimmers were old enough to be on the cusp of a watery death and wouldn’t have noticed my cellulite if it was in large print and taped to the front of a Daniel O’ Donnell CD.

I’m actually not bad at swimming, although apparently I have an alarming screw kick, which suggests an ability to get ruthless in the bedroom but is in fact something else entirely. But I can plough up and down for an hour or so in the goggles on/head down position favoured by the gym-phobic or possessed. What I need (if such a thing exists and you happen to have one that you would like to give me, hint hint) is a fully waterproof iPod case thingy, and then I will create the ultimate swimming playlist, which will include `I Can’t Swim’ by Snoop Dog, `The Crawl’ by Placebo and any other suggestions you may have that include the words `wet’ or `length’.

My first ever job was in the very leisure centre I was swimming in this morning; in the early `90s I spent four years promoting the benefits of lunging for the elderly and booking activities for sulky foreign students, whilst wearing a uniform crafted entirely from purple polyester. So I have inside information. The shower thermostat, for example, is cunningly rigged up to the vending machine in reception; it only takes a Twix and a packet of Wheat Crunchies to adjust the water temperature from `ow fuck I’m burning’ to `jesus fucking Christ I’m having a stroke’. Absolutely true, that.

But I was never a lifeguard, and I always felt a bit sorry for the early shift because they had the ultimate in shitty lifeguard jobs – sluicing out the changing rooms and scraping yesterday’s pubes and congealed dead skin/body fat out of the shower drains. At 6.30am. This is genuinely true, unlike my previous comment about vending machines which may have been a teeny bit made up.

So. Municipal changing rooms are, in my experience, frequented by very random and bizarre people. And also they are dirty, cold and smelly – hardly fucking Champneys, and not really the place to lounge around for a chat. Especially naked, with a leg up so you can take your time drying individually between your toes. When you are in the autumn of your years and have a straggly grey bush the size of a badger.

So having been subjected to this at 7.30am, as well as another old granny flossing her crack with a small towel and then chucking half a bottle of talcum powder over it, me and everything in a ten metre radius, I flounced out in a huff with wet hair and rang GBF for a moan about exhibitionist pensioners. As you do.

Well, it turns out the mens’ is even worse. According to GBF, there are men who insist on putting all their clothes on in the wrong order, so they roam about wearing a shirt and tie, but are otherwise naked. Socks optional. This clearly puts paid to all his homoerotic changing room fantasies, and actually made me retch.

So I’m joining somewhere posh. With cubicles. And shower curtains. And strict rules about the order in which you are required to put your clothes on. Or I might just stay in bed in future.