SHORT STORY

I don’t ever remember learning to swim or even being taught to. It was always just something I did from childhood although it wasn’t until years later I learned true respect for water, particularly the sea. From the age of eleven, I had decided I would join the Navy after listening to my cousin Paul telling me amazing stories about all of the countries he had visited during his service. Did I know there was another Tyne Bridge in Australia they call the Coat Hanger? Wow, no. But years later as I lined the upper deck with shipmates and we sailed under it his story came flooding back. Looking up from the focsle, realising both bridges were built by Geordies filled me with an immense sense of pride.

          As a boy, fascinated by Paul’s stories, I listened agog to his every word. Before even arriving in New Zealand I looked forward to being welcomed on the quayside by a Maori haka and very much anticipated being greeted with a nose rub. The fact their cultures and traditions were so very different from my own fascinated me; there really were other worlds away from my own cold, grey, cobbly backstreets because Paul had said so. In my mind’s eye I was right there; running along white sandy beaches fringed in palm trees as the warm white waves crashed into frothy foam swirling around my feet. Yes, I knew I would have to cross many deep, dangerous oceans and angry seas full of rip tides and whirlpools to get there but was quite blase about that; after all, I could swim. Couldn’t I? 

Fiercely proud of my Geordie roots I grieved the day we left. I was nine. Dad worked at Beamish Mary pit and on Fridays I’d go with him to collect his pay. When the closure notice came he was offered the chance to either move to another pit in the North, or go south and be given a rent free house for a year. I’m not sure I ever forgave him. Sixty years later I finally moved back, a few miles from his old pit; it’s now the Beamish Museum. Jimmy Nail, in his song Big River (1995) captured my feelings of both pride and loss so well, it was almost as though he knew me. 

          From my early days I remember the excitement of carrying my swiss roll of towel and trunks to the baths, walking into steamy changing rooms and smelling the chlorine as it wafted through from the pool. The worst part was going through the sheep dip-like foot wash because that water was always freezing, but then sliding into the warm pool from the side almost felt like getting into bed with an electric blanket on. For the first ten minutes I would yoyo to the bottom and back doing chinese lengths purely to bask, warming up my skinny body that had conditioned itself to the chilly North Eastern climate. Being underwater was my favourite part, it felt like being in another world; as I breast-stroked the widths of the pool until my fingertips felt like prunes my confidence grew, so water held no fear for me; not the deep, dangerous oceans nor the angry seas with their rip tides and whirlpools. After all, I could swim. Couldn’t I?

I was fourteen when Apollo 11 made the first ever moon landing.  As I watched it on our flickering black and white telly I remember holding my breath as though I was under water swimming as fast as I could, aiming to complete a full length instead of my usual width. That memory from 1969 still remains crystally clear: Neil Armstrong is taking his first step on the moon, galvanising the world with his words: ‘One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind’. While Paul’s stories were inspiring, Armstrong’s words were an epiphany; what small steps had I actually taken myself to achieve my dream? Motivated to kick-start my journey, I signed up for the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award Scheme and decided the first of my four challenges would be the Bronze Medallion in Life Saving; I felt quite confident, after all I could swim. Couldn’t I?

          Standing poolside, listening to the instructor was the first time I realised what complacency meant. Before even putting a toe into the water a verbal summary of the nine tests to complete the award permeated my brain as a bead of sweat trickled slowly down my forehead, over my eyebrow and into my eye. I felt my stomach slowly sink, like Titanic had in 1812 but without the band playing on. Far from hearing the reassuring music of Hartley’s band, the only sounds I could hear other than the instructor’s monologue was the dulcet rumble of my innards threatening to abandon my body. Yes I could swim. In a pool. But what about a fast flowing river, a deep lake, an angry sea or worse still a deep, dark ocean full of sharks? And could I swim fully clothed towing someone having a suspected heart attack, or an unconscious casualty, or even someone attacking me? And assuming I could, could I perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the water or swim fast enough to safety and perform CPR?

School days were not a happy experience; having survived an abusive seven years in a children’s home I had evolved into something of a rebel even though I was now part of a loving foster family. Considered a bad influence, detensions and canings became something I had become accustomed to, almost immune from, which my science teacher Samson knew fine well. For someone I had zero respect for, his saving grace was that he was an amazing shot with a blackboard rubber. With his close set eyes I wondered if he had ever served as a bootneck in the Royal Marines. Indifferent to him otherwise, and to academic success, my focus became wholly my Bronze Medallion and so for months on end I swam, swam, swam and swam. Working like a shire horse, it was the hardest thing I had ever done. It took me a year. But holding my medal felt like having a passport to the world. For the first time in my life I really believed I could do anything if I wanted to do it badly enough. 

          At the presentation ceremony my instructor asked if it was true that I was joining the Navy. Excitedly, I said yes. 

‘Then I should see this course as the tip of an iceberg’. She wasn’t wrong.