1132 Lindos Memory

It has been a poor day of indecisiveness and discontent with myself, and unwilling to attempt sleep I worked through the writings of a new friend and was struck by the advice of someone who recommended that he try swimming in response to a poem in which he expressed serious and unrequited feelings. At first it seemed a harsh as well as a humorous comment but it then triggered my feelings about swimming and being in water.

As a child I had great fear of water and the concept of drowning. I know when and where fear struck when as a child between the ages of five and ten, after World War two, I was deliberately dropped into the sea at Brighton by an older first cousin who had been a Prisoner of war in Germany and was liberated by the Russians.

All forms of premature death are frightening but drowning has always seemed to me a horrible experience. The fear of water just as the fear of heights remained with me throughout childhood and into adulthood. In my mid twenties I visited Greece for the first time, staying at Athens and visiting its beach where if you raise your hand you can touch the undercarriage of the planes coming into land. The sea here creeps gently for metre and metre and because of this its also hearts up with the sun, even in October. I did not lose the fear or lean to swim properly, but it was such an enjoyable experience that in subsequent journeys to the south of France and to Northern Spain I was able to move in water some distance, but always within my depth.

Then in 1991, back in the South of France, at a small villa but with its own secluded pool, and alone one day, I sat naked in the sun, eating French bread, Italian salami, Greek olives and Spanish wine, and learnt the exhilaration of swimming regardless of the depth of water, although I did not feel fully in control. Within a year I had joined a newly opened leisurely at a hotel within yards of my home and in my mid fifties I determined to overcome the continuing lack of self confidence about water, so I held my breath and learnt to swim underwater within the course of a one hour session on one day.

It was appropriate that it was within Greek waters, on the Island of Rhodes that the new confidence was put to the test at St Paul's Bay where there is only a narrow entrance to the sea, sufficient for tourist boat trips but creating a vast expanse of flat water. It is at least a kilometre from the narrow sandy strip nearest to the hotel where I was staying, across the bay a second stretch of sand under the castled hill top which marks one end of Lindos town and then 100 metres to the sea entrance and during the visit of a week I succeeded in swimming all the way to both points and back.

In the heights of Summer Lindos is an extraordinarily hot land and even as the season came to an end it was impossible to walk about in comfort during the midday sun and combination of this sun on water on an English summer's skin burn flesh sore. But nothing could take away from that first triumphant crossing of water at distance and over depth. I will not attempt to list the 101 great moments in my life until the task is done, but I can say without hesitation that the St Paul's Bay swims are in the top ten, along with climbing a Scottish mountain, which subsequently led to being able to fix chicken wire above the second floor windows of as former home to prevent pigeons roosting.. After the first distance swim I went on the boat trip which goes as far to the cliffs where the film the Guns of Navarone was set in 1961. The boat anchored off shore to enable a jump into the sea. I did.

It is only when writing this that I realised that the gap between the Athens and Lindos visits was the same as the length of my life till then, and that I will need to live for another ten years to return again a similar period later. That must be added to other ambitions.

It is deeply satisfying to feel in control of ones self within nature to having pushed ones self to the limits and beyond previous expectation. Just as when I write or reflect I lose all sense of age, in the sea under the sun, or when comfortable in water, I lose any sense of my physical bulk. I suspect nothing comes close to carrying a child for nine months, enduring the pain of birth and then holding a new and dependent life, flesh against flesh, but swimming fearlessly came close. Yep, when the spirits are low, when paradise has been lost, and is unlikely to be regained, yep a swim is a good idea to recommend friend to friend, although sharing the swim with a friend is better still!