Crawlstroke Bullies

So where would you go to encounter supposedly mature males in a state of undress, displaying and posturing atavistically whilst females and submissive males cringe and avoid their gaze? The plains of Africa? A soccer match with a history of club rivalry? Or how about the local Leisure Centre at half-past seven in the morning?

Debbie and I have recently started swimming, and we try and get down one or two mornings a week before work. The pool attracts a small crowd of regulars, most of whom are pensioners on reduced-rate leisure passes, in fact we tend to be the youngest there, and we’re no spring chickens. The parading starts in the male changing rooms, as they waggle their stuff in the communal area, talking proudly of their cut-price holidays and encroaching ailments whilst I slink off quietly into a cubicle to get into my swim gear.

Debbie always tries to do thirty-two lengths of the pool – half a mile – in around forty minutes, and in that time I can now muster between twenty and twenty-six; I can swim slightly faster than her if need be, but my stamina’s poor and my buoyancy can’t match hers, so I find myself stopping to recuperate after every one or two lengths. Often I swim in her wake, gallantly letting my wife bear the main force of the amphibious assault as she’s much harder to drown than I am – not that they would deliberately hit her, of course, but they flail and splash inconsiderately, sometimes side-by-side leaving a narrow gap of churned water between them, or decide to create a tsunami by launching their monstrous bulk into a dive at the deep end.

I hasten to add that we’re not talking dominant young bucks here, these are guys of advancing age, heads bald or fringed with silvery wisps, and they’re not actually unpleasant should you attempt to converse with them (although you’re likely to get a mouthful of displaced water), they’re just a bit loud and thoughtless. Enid, a slender senior with a hint of mermaid in her genetic make-up, is quite unfazed by them as her tactic is to go underwater to let them pass, resurfacing between their legs which apparently makes them nervous, but I always swim in glasses so I can see them coming and take early evasive action. And it takes a brave young lifeguard to remonstrate with a man three times his own age who won’t in any case take a blind bit of notice.

Sadly there seems to be an inbuilt genetic tendency in the male of every species to preen and pluck and prance in the presence of females – the feral pigeons pottering around the leisure centre are easy to sex on this basis even though they look identical, and I really think these game old boys in the pool are quite unaware of what they’re doing. But I wish they’d bloody give up and let us swim in peace.