Exercising Your Moint

Avert your eyes! A strange way to start a blog, granted… No, it’s not the end of the world; the apocalypse has not begun – I simply manifested my belly and went swimming today. It was here that he arrived: the Moint. His frame was not one of an Olympian (unless that’s the name of a new type of burger at McBurger King). He had evidently not been into any swimming baths for a long time. His look of bewilderment only transcended by his entirely graceless, one should say, “sinking” into the water.

Every eye saw.

And I believe every ear heard his expletive as the unexpected coldness of the pool water delivered him an immediate and profound sense of “reshaping”.

A few more expletives did well to scantily fight their way into sound waves – although, they only reached the ears of those of us closest to him. He panted, and the return of his bemused look signified that he had remembered where he was – this alien place; this water-filled adversary known colloquially as a ‘pool’.

A few raised eyebrows of the other pool users, now his natural enemies of course, failed to alert him to the truth that he was, in fact, slouched in the fast lane. As a moint, he carried on regardless of course. After steeling himself for the oncoming plight of doom, he pushed himself off the pool wall into a rather impressive front crawl. To the bemusement of his enemies, he made it to the other side rather adroitly, tumbling and turning like the best of them to begin the return stint with breast stroke. I’m sure I heard a clap…

Another length expertly completed. This [once-mistaken-for-a] moint was defeating his enemies and his chlorine fuelled nemesis with aplomb.

Then.

Oh, then…

This time not attempting a tumble turn, he took the much safer, and less strenuous, option of: standing up, wheezing, looking faint, and painfully re-entering the water with a tired looking front crawl. By the halfway point of this gruelling length, there was less “front” and a significant amount more of “crawl” in his poor endeavour to reach the end wall still breathing. He succeeded, but had the 25m pool instead been 26m long, I fear this blog may have taken a rather macabre turn for the worse at this point. Thanks to our modern western obsession with decimalisation, he lives on.

Fearing now for his life, and seemingly at the mercy of his adversary, the Moint dragged himself along the wall into the medium lane where he fared much better. Excelled, one might say (but two or more wouldn’t). For the final ten minutes of his battle, he returned to the fast lane, buoyed by his efforts in the medium lane. A moint never learns.

In case you are indeed a moint and have not figured it out yet, the Moint was in fact me. That’s right. I am he (how else would I have known about the… yes well, it doesn’t matter). It turns out you can’t just return to swimming the 5km you once could after having not swum for years!

My walk up the relentless steep hill back to my house was a sombre one. Can I redeem myself of my mointish behaviour by taking it easier next time? Unlike today’s debacle, will my next battle with my watery adversary leave me with enough strength to actually dry myself afterwards? Only time will tell. But we already know the answer, don’t we?

Ugh.