Awkward conversations

Now I’m not really one to feel self-conscious. If we’re being brutally honest here, I actually quite like getting attention – a hangover from my Mum never looking at how high I was going. Recent experience, however, has taught me that I have boundaries – lines that should not, under any circumstances, be crossed.

You often hear folk whinging these days (folk never used to grumble in the good ol’ days, you see) that London is an anti-social place. Nobody speaks to you on the tube, you can never catch that attractive person’s eye and not one person has EVER asked you what you’re writing on your MacBook Pro in Starbucks.

Why is it then that all the social bees seem to congregate at public swimming pools? Swimming is not a social sport. You spend the majority of your time burying your head under water as if you’re frantically training for the Somerset under-23 county apple-bobbing championships. This is not the kind of pastime that you’d imagine would appeal to the chatterboxes.

But it does. Oh, how it does. In normal life, someone’s willy flopping around in the breeze would be cause for looking away in embarrassment, or perhaps letting out a little snigger. But not in the public baths’ changing rooms. Such a sight is an open invitation for chatting about the weather, or asking what you bought your mother for Christmas. Why?! You wouldn’t speak to me clothed – why speak to me with such gusto now that the crown jewels are available for viewing?!

And it doesn’t stop at the changing room doors. Never has the expression “do you come here often?” been so utterly misused as during stilted chats in the shallow end. The correct use of that phrase should have it dripping in irony. It is NOT correct when both parties are dripping wet and literally dressed in speedos.

Boys have it easy though. Several times my other half has come home from her swim to tell me that other members of the fairer sex have quizzed her on personal gardening techniques and habits. How you squirm out of that one I have no idea. Answers on a postcard please.

This is one of those rare instances when life would be so much better if people weren’t quite so keen to be friendly. When I become President of the United World this will be my first royal decree: no extraneous words in swimming pools. That will be all.

Ned is doing Ironman Wales to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. You can sponsor him online by visiting www.justgiving.com/NedsIronman or by text through JustTextGiving by sending ‘IRON66 £(amount you’d like to give)’ to 70070. Thanks for your support!