Should We Build Floating Houses?
The BBC web site muses about floating houses in this article. After all our floods, it could be one of the answers to building in areas likely to flood.
But myself, I’d prefer to live well away from water. I can’t swim and after what I’ve been through, to drown would be complete failure.
C Swam In The Serpentine
I’ve said before that my late wife, C, was a manic swimmer. One summer when we lived in St. John’s Wood, we went to the Serpentine to swim. Or in my case, just stand and sit around.
Now, there’s swimming the triathlon in the same lake, over forty years later.
Japanese Swimmers Train In Basildon
On the London BBC News, they showed the Japanese Swimming Team greeting the Olympic Torch Relay in Basildon, where they are training before the Olympics. The story about how they chose Basildon is here on the BBC.
I wonder what the Japanese are making of Basilson and have they worked out the humour behind the Essex Girl jokes. I wonder if Japan has a similar set of jokes about girls from an area of the country!
It’s Swimwear Buying Time Again
Judging by this picture of a London bus, it’s time to buy swimwear again.
H&M Swimwear Advert on a London Bus
Not me, as I don’t swim. And the advert wouldn’t apply to me personally, as I’m a man.
My late wife, C, was a manic and enthusiastic swimmer to say the least and every day before work, she’d swim umpteen lengths in the pool at Bedford Lodge Hotel in Newmarket. She used to wear out Speedo Endurance swimsuits regularly, and I used to watch eBay for when last year’s models were sold off for here. Do professional swimmers have suits and trunks made out of something more long-lasting, or does the sponsor just pay?
I remember in 2007, which was the year she died, that C decided she needed some summer clothes and that of course meant swimwear. Since her breast cancer a few years before, she always felt that she must look the best fifty-year-old on the beach, not out of vanity, but more to stick two fingers up to the cancer. Although, she was probably two polite to do that other than metaphorically.
So she bought tickets on easyJet and one Friday in April we took the plane to Nice and checked in at the Hotel Windsor, which is much recommended. We had a marvellous weekend in the sun.
It was the first of seven holidays that we took in that fateful year before she died in December of a cancer totally unrelated to that in her breast.
My biggest memory of that holiday, is that C decided to buy a couple of bikinis for the summer. So we headed to Gallerie Lafayette and for a couple of hours, she tried on most that were suitable in the shop, whilst I passed what I thought might be suitable or a different size over the door of the changing room. It was a difficult job, but someone had to do it. They got hard work that last summer she was alive.
The picture shows C on the beach on the island of Panarea. I think you can just see that she was wearing nail polish, something she rarely did except on holiday.
A Discussion About Race and Swimming
I found this article called Why don’t black Americans swim? on the BBC web site and it makes a lot of interesting points and the comments from readers are fascinating.
I can’t criticise anybody, as I don’t swim, but all my children do or did and of course C was a very competent swimmer. But my parents hadn’t got a stroke between them.
I seem to remember reading an article about swimming rates in various nations and there is quite a variation between some countries, where you’d think swimming rates would be similar.
Graeme Obree’s Idea to Stop Drug Cheats
Graeme Obree has just said on BBC Radio 5, that the best way to stop drugs cheats in cycling is not to give them their prize money until several years after the event.
But why not add swimming, athletics, and of course, weight-lifting?
Ipswich Nimbys Object to Swimming Pool
Most Nimbys usually object to something large and of great importance to the nation like a new railway or port, a power station or refuse incinerator or new housing. But not in Ipswich. According to this report in the East Anglian Daily Times, they are objecting to the reopening of a swimming pool. Their main reasons seem to be concerns about car parking, which means my sympathies are with the swimmers. Not that I can swim, but I know of many who have enjoyed the pool at Broomhill. Especially, as the pool seems to have a lot of architectural merit.
The Anonymous Widower 