Having played snooker a few days ago I'm not sure whether I am worse at potting balls or swimming in a pool.
My journey to be able to swim is a rather pathetic one. As a child I was terrified of the water and I think that comes from an incident at Great Yarmouth when I was very young. I was in the sea and a family beckoned for me to join them. They were quite a way out and I ran to join them only to find that the sea shelved down quite quickly and I went under the water and panicked. I probably was in no danger at all but I still remember taking in water and being really scared.
The fact I remember that so graphically suggests that my fear of the water comes from that incident. I went through my whole school life being unable to swim. Neither could I swim when my two sons came along. I just never made the effort.
Then in the early 1990s there was an auction of promises at the school for which I was a governor. My wife thought it would be a good idea to bid for one to one lessons with the school's swimming teacher who just also happened to be a friend of ours.
Very reluctantly I went along on a Thursday evening to the pool at what was then Hethersett Middle School and I learnt to swim - well in a fashion. I had always said that if I could just put my head under the water I would be able to swim. So I learnt to put my head under water and even sit on the bottom of the pool. Problem is I can now only swim under the water.
Now that sounds good apart from the fact that now I can only swim under the water which means that when I need to take a breath I have to stop swimming. Just raise your head out of the water I hear you say. Easier said than done I reply. I just cannot. Perhaps it's my body shape but my head refuses to bob up. Let's just say my swimming is a work in progress and leave it at that!
At least now I no longer have an irrational fear of the water!
Yesterday on the way back to Beaumaris from Portmeirion we stopped at a Tesco Supermarket. Only about one-third of people were wearing masks. It's not compulsory to wear masks in shops in Wales. So it's all rather confusing as in England it is thought that wearing masks in shops is a good preventive measure whilst nipping over the border it's thought to be pretty much an irrelevancy.