Bobbing Up and Down Like This

This is how it often is when I go into the sea. This is how it was today.

The sea looks grey and chilly. It's fairly late in the afternoon. Nobody else is in the sea. I think well, perhaps I won't bother - I'll go up to the hotel and go in the outdoor pool, which is heated, and which looks more welcoming.

Then I remember my little mantra, which I thought of many years ago to remind myself on just such occasions of doubt. "It is always worth swimming in the sea."

So, swimsuit and goggles on - no wetsuit today - and straight down, and straight in. Gasp. Cold! Up I come, then instantly down again and start swimming. Cold cold cold - - and then, after a minute or so - - - not cold any more. So I carry on swimming, in amongst the waves, and after a few minutes - - well, I'm warm. Lovely!

Today I stayed in for forty minutes or so. It was bliss. It always is. I just feel free. I swam quite a way along the beach and then back again - - - and did it again and again, interspersed with a bit of floating on my back and jumping amongst the waves.

Yesterday was different, because I was wearing the wetsuit. When I swam in the lake in the wetsuit, it felt too buoyant - I felt too high up in the water. But I coped - and yet it was only half a mile or so.

The sea, of course, is even more buoyant than the lake. I felt like a floating beach ball, barely touching the surface of the water (and anyone who feels like remarking that I must have looked like one too can stop it right there!)

My arms were too high - - but that was nothing compared to my legs, which felt as though they were almost out of the water. I felt that I was curving my spine like a banana. On the "glide" bit of breast stroke, I put my face in the water - - but it was very difficult to get it low enough.

After a while, I came out of the water, took the wetsuit off and enjoyed swimming in just my swimsuit for the rest of the time.

I have been told by others that swimming in a wetsuit makes you more buoyant than usual, but this is ridiculous! I'm wondering - in my usual worried way - if it's because my legs are short. Some people with long legs find it hard to stop their legs sinking. I'm having the opposite problem.

I'll keep on practising to see if I can get used to it. Perhaps the wetsuit will become more flexible after a while, and perhaps I'll get used to the new angle of swimming. I can see why they insist that you wear one for the Great North Swim - the cold could make it really dangerous and I realise that most people mind the cold water more than I do. But meanwhile, it's a bit of a problem.

There was nobody else in the sea when I went in, as I mentioned earlier. But, of course, that was because my mother had just got out of it, after her swim. She's eighty-six, and has she ever worn a wetsuit? Of course not.