Cutting school swimming lessons in an island community? Makes perfect sense…

You can read this as an essay or listen to it along with 15 (even though I say so myself) fantastic songs, mostly from the 60s and 70s on Mixcloud by clicking here. The whole thing goes out as a show on 60 North Radio on Friday at 7.00pm and is available on the 60 North archive page. Full playlist at the end of the text .

I learned to swim in the unheated 1960s salt water of an old, open-air pool, long demolished. We had moved from the city of Glasgow to the seaside town of Troon in Ayrshire and mum and dad thought it would, due to the presence of the ocean in large, Firth of Clyde quantities, be wise if I gained the ability to keep myself afloat and moving in the briny deep.

And so off I went each Tuesday to the unbelievably cold shallow end of that art deco pool. Swimming lessons: gooseflesh, a lot of shouting and not much sympathy.  I still remember the shock of immersion, the shame of inflatable armbands, the eventual relief, after weeks, of being able to breast-stroke my way along, slowly, head determinedly out of that ache-inducing water. To this day, it’s the only stroke I know.

Though as I grew older the pool became a summer haven for tentative hooligans, and my friends and I gradually worked out that early in the week, immediately after an emptying, scrubbing and a fresh influx of seawater on a Monday, was not the most comfortable time to go swimming. Better to wait until the lido had heated up, through sunshine and, well, the escaping body heat of customers. Not to mention, let’s be honest, their bodily fluids. By the time the weekend came along, the unfiltered water was murkily opaque, but depending on conditions, could also be bathtub warm.

It was a big pool, Olympic length for races but with slides, a springboard and a diving stage that could not possibly have been 30 feet high, though that’s what we told ourselves. Maybe it was. I know that the deep end had only nine feet of water in it and when you dived off the top board, your head always hit the ceramic tiles at the bottom with a smack, sometimes a bloodied crunch.

The changing rooms were horrific, dark brown, sludgy and stinking of veruccad feet. In the height of summer, there was a kind of sun deck where oiled bodies were displayed and the occasional adolescent fondle was ventured. It was tarred, and if the sun was really hot, maybe once or twice a decade, you could pick lumps of the surface off and drop them sizzling into the pool below. This was not calculated to win the approval of attendants.

I am in Troon at the moment, walking the dog daily through the site of the old pool, now a  car park. It was eventually upgraded, the old tiles lined with some kind of polymer and an effort at heating made. The diving boards were closed. But eventually the vast edifice itself shut amid terrible stories about proliferating lice beneath the plastic lining, and it became a victim of council cutbacks and public suspicion.

There is a modern indoor pool next to Morrison’s, but I’m tempted neither by its chlorinated steaminess or the current fashion for so-called wild swimming. Two heartattacks and four stents are quite enough. I will not betray the fine work of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s Cath Lab by shocking my ticker into stasis off the Ballast Bank.

I have been thinking about swimming a lot this week though, as I’m geographically far from my council responsibilities in Shetland, while my fellow members have been setting annual budgets. Despite Shetland’s £ 450 million plus reserves, greater than the reserves of all other Scottish local authorities added together, councillors this week voted to slash spending, having already increased council tax. Even in a cost of living emergency like the one we’re living through, they would rather appease the aged agents of Government centralisation, the Accounts commission, who have warned that the reserves will disappear if they’re used for the good of the Shetland people. Eventually. I have fought and been defeated in the battle to prevent this fiscal failure of morality and honour.

Instead a series of remarkably petty and sometimes verging on insane cuts have been or will be imposed

In moves which beggar belief for the would-be rulers of an island group, there was the suggestion at one committee that swimming lessons be removed from school curricula to save money. Perhaps a few thousand pounds a year. I, alas, could not be at this meeting, but if I had I would have described the interview I once conducted with a fisherman whose vessel had sunk beneath him. This man was a strong swimmer, and he was able to keep one of his non-swimming crewmates afloat for a good 20 minutes, as nearby boats raced to their rescue.

But it was not long enough. I still remember the look on his face as we sat in the Fishermen’s Mission in Lerwick, and he said. “Eventually, he slipped through my arms.”

Maybe he should have been wearing a lifejacket, though nobody did in those days. Maybe being able to swim wouldn’t have helped. But then again, maybe it would.

Playlist. Please click here to listen to the Mixcloud stream. It’s also available on 60 North Radio’s archive and goes out each Friday between 7.00pm and 8.00pm

Medicine Head — When Night Falls

Mary Margaret O’Hara — To Cry About

Kevin Coyne — Eastbourne Ladies

Robert Wyatt — Shipbuilding

Dory Previn — The Lady with the Braid

Fairport  Convention — Si Tu Dois Partir

Bert Jansch — Black Water Side

Kevin Ayers — Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes

Incredible String Band — The Hedgehog’s Song

Jackson C Frank — Milk and Honey

Donovan — Get Thy Bearings

Lovin’ Spoonful — Coconut Grove

John Martyn — Man in the Station

Bridget St John — Ask Me No Questions

Anne Briggs — Go Your Way