Sink or Swim

I now have a Tumblr blog, full of sexy and beautiful images of the sea...

Find it at:

Sink or Swim

The Seahorse

To read about Jean Painleve's film-making, click the link below.

Sounding the Depths: Jean Painleve's Sunken Cinema

Underwater

Click images to enlarge

In approximate order: shark, ray, more rays, turtle, shoals, seahorse, bubbling water angel, moon jellyfish, leopard fish and friend.

Photos taken at Brighton Sea Life Centre

All Your Women Things

Crawling

I'm a strong swimmer, in that I have stamina: I keep going and going. However I am not fast. If I were to compete in a race, I'd cut a woeful figure. Primarily this is because I only do breast stroke. I love breast stroke. Though I've changed my technique over the last few months - improving it, finessing - my love for the essential way my body moves through the water remains the same. Slow and smooth, it allows me space and time to bring my mind into regulation with my body. Dare I say it, it is meditative. 

     Lately, however, I've had to face a fact - I can't get by anymore without a good front crawl technique. Recently I was reminded of this when I rang up Brighton Swimming Club to join their sea-swimming group. Talking to their head, Fiona, about my swimming abilities, everything was going  well - she even proposed we 'test the waters' together with a swim around Brighton Pier.  A couple of months ago I swam easily the around the West Pier so I knew this would be no problem. But then I told her that I don't do front crawl. Silence. We can't accept you unless you can do, well, at least sixty lengths of it. 
     So there it was - my dreams of sea swimming daily, pier to pier, dashed.  I know it makes sense. Any sea swimming club needs its members to be able to shift into front crawl when waves become unruly, when the current tugs in unfavourable directions. Breast stroke is never going to get you to shore in a storm. Sometimes it's wild out there, and Brighton Swimming Club swims every day, all weathers. How naive could I be? Perhaps it can be your winter project? Fiona suggested tentatively. I'm sure you'll be up to sixty by new year. 

     Fiona hasn't seen my front crawl. Essentially, it resembles someone drowning. However I took  the bull by the horns and two weeks ago I had my first swimming lesson. James, a young instructor,  began the lesson by saying, Let's see what you can do - go on, do a length, any stroke. I breast stroked up and down the end lane of Kind Alfred's, calm and swift. Then he asked me to show him my front crawl. I managed quarter of a length before sinking -  mouth full of chlorine, lungs full of water. We tried me using a float. Then turning just to one side. Half an hour sped by. What I learnt is that I know virtually nothing about how to do the front crawl and that learning in the King Alfred pool is a horrible, humiliating experience - lifeguards gathering at the poolside to witness my failure. 

     So I've taken to teaching myself, with a little help from a friend. I do my regular sixty lengths of breast stroke, and then try out half a length here, quarter of a length there. I've even tried in the sea. It's hard. My body is a jingle jangle of movements, desperate to come together: feet, behind, head, mouth, elbow, fingers. Sometimes one or more of them does, and then I'm off, tasting the freedom of what it might be like to really be able to swim this way. However mainly I thrash about in the water, swallowing too much of it - panicking, exhausted. 

     But I'm determined. I will learn. I have until April. I taste the desire for it, to change my stroke and experience the water in a different way - to speed gracefully through open water. 

Keep Your Head Above Water

I've written a post on swimming on my other blog, This Beautiful Hunger.
http://thisbeautifulhunger.blogspot.com/2011/09/september.html

Deep End

Soundtrack by Can and Cat Stevens, plus it's set in a swimming pool. What more could you want?

The World's Sexiest Swimming Pools

This is what I call 'Pool Porn.' Be warned: contains scenes of a graphic nature.

21-of-the-worlds-sexiest-rooftop-pool
And some more...

Total Immersion

How I learn to swim effortlessly in 10 days

I know little about the swimming technique known as Total Immersion. However, slowly I am taking in more information through watching videos and reading online. It's pretty attractive to me. What is appealing is how this technique  goes directly against so many of the strategies I've seen in swimming up to now - where it is about speed, strength and pushing oneself. I've witnessed so many swimmers in the pool thrashing about, pushing themselves against the water, powering themselves up and down the Fast Lane. This is the opposite with an emphasis on relaxing and working with the water. 

     I'm keen to learn more. I've noted that they run swimming 'holidays' where you learn this technique 'in depth', as it were. However, seeing as they are at £300-£500 a go, for now I'll have to satisfy myself with watching YouTube videos and trying to follow their advice once I'm in the pool. 
     Click the link above for a nice account of someone's experience of Total Immersion.

Last Perfect Day of Summer

Just when we thought summer was a distant, drab memory, it returned this weekend, in a blaze of heat and blue sky. In fact, this was what made it so special - everyone had started gritting their teeth for the onset of   cold, turning their heating on, getting out the Ugg boots, and then, BAM!  we were hit with a glorious sunny weekend. And so the beach, from Brighton Pier to the end of Hove, was rammed with locals and holiday makers, day-trippers... who cares, none of us did; all in it together, sharing the joy, filling every possible space of that stony beach - dogs, barbeques, toddlers, all squeezed in together in one (slightly dangerous) mush. 

Usually I'd take exception to this. I hate crowded beaches. I tend to think I own the stretch from the start of Hove Lawns to its end, and woe betide anyone who dare befriend me/ talk loudly next to me/set up a stinky barbeque in front of me and then proceed to sing Bob Dylan songs to an out-of-tune guitar. But all of these sat fine with me, because Sunday was the last perfect day of summer. I swam to exhaustion, and then I swam some more. Then I lay in my bikini until the sun turned cherry above me.

Magnet: Last Day of Summer