Getting in the Zone

Where did all the hot weather go? The blazing sun that should have been warming up the water in Salford Docks this week? 

Tomorrow is the Great Swim and we're in the last wave at 3.20. The cameras will be rolling, and broadcasting live on BBC 2. Ulp! No pressure then.....

This is my cap - you'll be able to spot me bringing up the rear and staggering over the finish line. 

I swam 3/4 mile yesterday, and a mile on Thursday in 45 minutes - a great time for me. I'd be very impressed if I managed a time like that tomorrow. 

Here's the all-important chip that'll keep track of me

and here's that great poem from Sharon Olds, that seems to sum it all up

The Swimming Race

Noon, Orinda Park Pool, three girls

in rubber caps sculpted with rubber

roses, and they had put our fathers

at the far end of our lanes. We curled

our toes over the edge, the gun went off -

they dove cleanly, as I jumped. By the time 

I had surfaced, and started to dog-paddle, they had

finished the race, their fathers had drawn them up

dripping and were handing them sateen ribbons with

rosettes, a red and a cobalt blue,

I held up my head as he'd taught me, and swam

like a dog toward his end of the pool. The day

was temperate and cloudless, live-oaks

in a large cluster full of yellow-jackets to my left,

the lawn to my right, and there before me, 

at the end of my lane - black lines

on the bottom of the pool, where the drowned would lie -

was my father. I paddled, I felt myself approach him,

I was grinning because of the prize I would win

for coming in third, a Big Hunk bar -

the milk and honey on the other side -

and because my father was getting bigger,

leaning toward me, his arms open.

He pulled me out, and held my hand

up by the wrist. My sister sneered, she said

Why did you lift Shary's fist

when she was last? and he smiled, a smile almost

without meanness, one of the last

times we saw him smile, he said

I thought she was winner of the next race, and his

face flushed with pleasure and the shade of the yardarm.

Sharon Olds

from The Wellspring, 1995

Oh bring on that yardarm!!

Outdoor Shower

Still no swimming - might I make it back to the water tomorrow? Who knows. Anyway, my writing's been on a roll, two poems nearly ready for submission, so that is good.

To keep the spirit of the swim alive, here is one of the Sharon Olds poems that I mention on the side of the blog. I love it. And my tour de force - the picture above - which I found on a bathroom fittings type website after scouring the internet. Perfect!

Outdoor Shower


Crusted with dried brack, dusted with
sand, shaking from the cold Atlantic,
hair gristled with crystals, tangled with the
jellied palps of wrack - just step on this
slatted rack, pull the iron
handle of the forged world toward you.
The sluice courses, down your shin,
in a swirling motion, milk smoke, the
silky rush of fresh water, supple and alkaline.
Lids clenched, you reach for the small
oil torso of soap, run it
along your limbs and whirl it over the points of the
three-point shower star of sex:
arm-pit, arm-pit, sex. Then the gritty
dial of your face, lather it, bring it
under the coursing, and open your mouth,
stone-sweet well-water,
and then the head,
delve it in so the sand around the scalp
dances like the ions at the edges of matter,
and the shampoo, mild soldier,
take her by the shoulders and pour the pale eel on your head. Then
      feel them going:
salp, chitin,diatom, dulse, the
blind ones of the ocean. Rinse until
it pours down your head like water, the dark
descendant pelf of the land. Now open your eyes -
green lawn, silver pond,
grey dune, blue Atlantic,
the simple fields of God, liquid and solid.
Turn and turn in hot water,
column of heat in the cool wind
and sunny air, squeeze your eyes and then
open them again - look, it is still there,
the world as heaven, your body at the edge of it.
Sharon Olds


from Blood, Tin, Straw, Knopf.