Article for 2012 Oct 10
This article is not in a series.
2012
2012 Oct
Oct 10 Wed
This year, as was last year, I have continued to swim every Wednesday, as part of my Physical Education, as much as possible. I say “as much as possible” because five weeks ago (5 September) the pool was closed because school was. The school had been open on the 4th (hence my 2012 Sep 04 article), but that evening heavy rainfall meant that the school was flooded. Class-rooms were flooded; games pitches were flooded; the pool was flooded.
The subsequent week, the pool was closed due to the harmful levels of chlorine arising from a purification fault. The fault was quickly fixed and the chlorine levels returned to appropriate.
Seven days later, God had made another world (He averages one a week), and my swimming-lesson was on. I tried out some butterfly, flapping my wings to great effect up down up down like the chlorine-levels in the pool.
By another week (September 25 now), the chlorine-levels had gone up, morale had gone down, and the pool was closed. A loss. Again.
On the 3rd of October, we had the 2nd swim-session of the new year, and I came 1st in the underwater back-stroke race. (We swimmers do crazy things like that; the phrase “water on the brain” springs to mind.) I reckon I’m so good at the back-stroke because my mum was once a professional masseuse. (Such masseuses do back-stroking for a living.)
We were also allowed to use the pool today. Judiciously, I avoided making my eyes sting by ensuring my eyes were closed for most of my time swimming the pool. What fun! I didn’t collide with many people, though I did get kicked in the ear in one collision.
So when I came out of the changing-rooms, my eyes weren’t smarting, but my ear was, a bit. After a scratch and a scritch in the itching body-part, I found that my finger was coated, like a stereotypical scientist in a white jacket, in a white substance. Once again, chlorine levels in the pool had re-risen almost to unsafety; this chlorine had bleached my earwax.
I know, it’s wacky (and waxy). How can they not have fixed the chlorine-levels properly? It makes me sick. Ahem - not quite sick. Bleached earwax, coughing, and fluid in the lungs, but no nausea yet. But as a scientist in a white coat might point out, perhaps the fluid in my lungs is from inhaling the swimming-pool water, rather than the chlorine. Perhaps the coughing is from my annual autumn cold. Perhaps the bleached earwax is from chlorine-levels getting excessive.