Long wiggly things

One thing I didn't mention was the antics we got up to in the aquarobics class itself. (NB I'm warm again now, thanks to the down-filled house boots I bought from www.presentsdirect.com for £14.95. Highly recommended. I have the purple ones.)

I am dispraxic in water. I can't control my own limbs, let alone props like those long foam tubes, or floating weights. One of the exercises involved threading a pink foam tube that looked like an elephant's willy between my ankles and knees, through my thighs and up my back. I was supposed to lie back on it while drawing my knees up to my chest. Some hope. At the merest hint of a weak ankle, the thing took on a life of its own, boomeranging tween my thighs and whacking me on the back of the head, or else boinging over the other side of the pool and hitting someone else. I was not popular. I was laughed at. But I didn't give up. No, not moi. Not even when it whacked me on the lips and demanded a blow job. (Keep it clean. Ed.) I aqua-soldiered on amidst much splashing, thanking heaven that my specs fitted tightly behind my ears. (Note: must get prescription goggles.)

One of the tunes Victoria, our lovely instructor with body to die for, played, was Elvis's Jailhouse Rock. I joined in, belting it out bigtime in spluttery fashion. One of the ladies - Vera, or Doreen, or even Chlorine (yes, we were all of a 'certain age'; in fact, I may just have been the baby of the group), turned round and declared, "Oh! Listen, ladies, we have a voice amongst us." Envy? Sarcasm? Nah, it's bound to be the latter. Unless someone behind the scenes is planning an aqua X Factor show. Though personally speaking, it's time they had a Specs Factor.