Swimming pool etiquette

In celebration of the Queen’s birthday I decided to treat myself to a night in a flash city hotel. There were plenty of deals to choose from, and the one I selected included valet parking, buffet breakfast and free in-house movies.

I was so excited as I drove my little car into the city on Sunday afternoon. Parking and check-in went smoothly, my room was quite nice, the room service menu seemed interesting (the first thing I always check) and the little toiletries were themed around a combination of vanilla and ylang ylang. How is that pronounced again?

Now, I love to swim. Laps and I go together like vegemite and fruit muffins (no, really), so I went to check out the facilities. OMG pictures on web sites can be misleading! The pool at this un-named hotel was small, square, in a low-ceilinged windowless room, and filled with kids. So not the lap-swimming opportunity I’d been dreaming of.

My disappointment prompted me to reminisce about other swimming pools I know. When I first moved to Melbourne and heard there was a public pool named after Harold Holt I wondered what kind of place I’d decided to call home! On a trip to Darwin many moons ago friends and I stayed at run-down uni accommodation that had been marked for demolition, and spent many hours in the pool in the tropical evening heat, scaring each other with the possibility of crocodiles joining us for a dip. And my dear departed favourite, the Footscray pool, was a daggy festival of humanity.

Aussie pools are great, but we are lucky. Other countries not only have lesser pools, but different and sometimes crazy pool etiquette. I remember trying to swim laps in a community pool in London, with old band-aids floating past me, and people’s feet in my face and hands clutching at my ankles and we all seethed up and down the pool, ingredients in a human soup. No different lanes for different speeds/abilities there!

At a hotel pool in Chicago I had a ridiculous conversation with the only other person using it at 6am over how we would manage to swim and not run into each other. I’m still not sure if I was supposed to be keeping right or left, but it just reinforced that I never want to drive in the US.

Perhaps the most bemusing experience was again in London, but this time at the very up-market, exclusive and traditional 100 year old RAC Club. A friend took me along to her club to use the steam room and the pool, which was indeed a lovely pool, all Grecian columns and mosaic tiles. Have you seen that Woody Allen film with Scarlett Johansson and our Hugh? It’s the pool in that where Scarlett is looking so fetching in her red bathers and she pretends to drown to attract Hugh’s attention.

So, I’m swimming from one end of the pool to the other, trying to work out what the system is, as there are no ropes or lane markings. But people are all over the place, and I have to keep looking in front of me to make sure I’m not about to have a head-on collision. So when I come to the end of a lap I ask a gentlemen who’s resting against the pool wall what the deal is. He says that some members of the club wanted to make rules about how best to ensure everyone’s safe enjoyment of the pool, but they were out-voted by others who said the pool had never had rules so why on earth should they bring them in now.

Swim safely!

Nina
Development Manager

PS The room service turned out to be poor. I’m so sick of bad sushi. If you’re not a trained sushi chef I say keep away from it.