Discussion: Tumbles?

After reading your almost, dare I say, heated, diatribe I can only suggest that you learn to tumble-turn... and then you can delight in the flip and big splash as your feet come over and hit the necessary 10-by-10cm bit of spare wall space above their shoulders and between their ears! It doesn't make them any happier with you actually "swimming" in their bathwater but at least you get a continuous swim and just occasionally they get the message to loiter in a smaller space!

I just like the fact that some of your shorter sessions Blair probably take longer to write up than the time training. Keep them coming!

nice level of crankiness Blair. keep fighting comrade.

hehe i especially like the violating daughters bit

As a longstanding and proud resident of Kew I would like to register my concern with the ignorant ramblings of our correspondent Mr Trewin. Just because in Kew we don't all support his preferred political party, we prefer jaguars to datsun 180Bs and like our daughters to remain unviolated, he has chosen to take out his frustrations on our innocent selves. I suggest Mr Trewin that if you can't accept the fact that we like to take our leisure activities a little slower than may be the custom in the northern suburbs, YOU GO RIGHT BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM YOU COMMUNIST SCUM.

Actually if the residents of Kew are anything like one of my colleagues, they took the time to be delighted that they are now rich enough that losing in one day the amount they just lost would have precisely zero effect on their lifestyles whatsoever.

This was one of the better training entries I've ever seen. I'd never thought of 'loitering at the end of the lane in the swimming pool' as a political act before.

I just find it interesting that Kew is the one pool I go to in Melbourne - and there are four or five that I go to at least occasionally - where people completely disregard basic lap-lane etiquette, and the offenders are almost exclusively men in their later 40s and 50s. I have no problem with people swimming slowly - I'm not exactly fast myself - but everywhere else if people swim slowly they do it in the lanes they're supposed to. Here the attitude seems to be that rules are for other people.

I was also rather unimpressed having recently read about the latest developments in the Darebin Bridge saga. (For those unfamiliar with the affair, this is a bike path bridge across the Yarra which has been planned, and budgeted, for at least 10 years but has been held up by opposition from elements from the local council on the Kew side, as well as legal trench warfare from an adjacent golf club and a school which claims that having a path going past it will be a threat to student safety. As someone who regularly goes past the other side of the school in question I can confidently assert that the standard of driving amongst its parents and teachers is a considerably greater threat to student safety).

Blair. For the full experience I recommend the cake Saturday morning experience in a cake shop. I never went shopping in Kew, but Balwyn was much the same demographic. Saturday morning at the bakery was an excellent experience of the sense of entitlement you are whinging about. But it was women, not men. Women who had been kept all their lives by very important men (as they saw it). This clearly entitled them to special treatment by being able to jump into the front of the queue for a 'quick' purchase. Of course, the perception of 'quick' was only existential. A personal purchase of ten distinct items feels much quicker than the purchase of a pie by the person in front of you. The really sad part was that the queue jumpers expected those displaced to see the reason and the justice of their behaviour. On the few occasions when I played deaf and unperceptive, I was likely to be elbowed out of the way by a 50something woman. Contact sport! Given this was what happened to me 20 years ago, I console myself that these women are now learning that life with a retired important husband can be quite a pain. Must check the new census data on that.

Speaking of census data, I have been much amused by the data for City of Melbourne. As one would expect, the population to the immediate north seems to have about half the states 20-25 year olds. Twice as many as predicted in projections only 3 or 4 years ago. But Docklands is quite the opposite. The count of preschoolers in particular was somewhere between 1 and 3 (randomisation for privacy). In another 10 years Docklands will be a ripe subject for spoofery. Or is it now?

OK, I will concede that once while swimming in the fast lane at Kew I got so sick of kids throwing their balls around all over the pool and then jumping in the fast lane to get them without looking that I once stopped, stood up, and pushed a small kid quite hard into the lane rope. He looked kinda shocked but it did the trick and he didn't do it again.

That struck close to home for me to Liggo... I can recall one time years ago putting up with similar behaviour for about 30mins before one bombie caused me to swallow what felt like a bucket of water into my lungs. Next lap when the offender was swimming (deliberately) across in front of me I was able to reach him, hold him down and give him triathlon-swimstart treatment as I went over him. Problem solv-ed this time too.

Doing one's swimming before 8.30 on weekday mornings normally insulates one from the activities of errant kids.

As for Docklands, I didn't realise anyone actually lived in all those apartments - I thought they just traded them.