I hated swimming lessons. They began in 4th year Juniors at Westgate Hill School in 1979-80, when I was 10/11 years old. We would be taken to Montagu Pool by a coach once a week to learn how to swim.

Immediately I knew I hated it, as did about a quarter of the boys in my class. We were soon moved to the mega-shallow learner’s pool and away from the scary large pool with the 12′ deep end. Of course this was not before I was thrown in to see if I could swim and had my head forced under the water by a teacher ‘to get used to it’ and ‘overcome my fear.’ That worked then.

Once we were at Rutherford, the school had its own pool (shit), from which I was mercifully saved for around a term or so as it was knackered. Mr. Seery was our swimming teacher and shoved us no-hopers down in the shallow end where we would have ’special guidance’ from a mad old bloke who probably had just walked in off the street, called Mr. Freeman. He was firmly of the belief that if kids could not swim, then frightening the little buggers into doing it was probably the best policy. He even fired a starting pistol above our heads a couple of times to startle us and make us jump in. Crazy bastard.

I endured 3 years of compulsory swimming lessons, which mainly consisted of my walking through the shallow end waving my arms around. We would swim a width, get out and touch the wall, jump back in and swim another width etc. Plenty of us couldn’t actually swim though, so there was really no point in doing this at all.

I hated the chlorine stench and the dirty, piss-filled water in the baths, I hated queueing up outside in the cold, waiting for the weekly humiliation to commence and I really hated having a wet towel stuck in my haversack all day.

Teachers would often claim that swimming was important as it could well save your life one day. I never really felt that it would and when pushed, Mr. Seery did say to me, “well you could be on a boat that sinks one day.” How wrong he was.

We did a sponsored swim in the 1st year and I did a creditable 21 lengths of the pool! Not bad as I could not swim a single stroke. Our ‘prize’ for being the class that collected the most moolah was a trip to Crowtree Leisure Centre, where they had a pool and an ice rink (zzzzz). Shit day that was – a school trip to Sunderland!!

I’ve never been in a pool since and I never will go in one again.