Challenge 26 - LEARN TO SWIM FRONT CRAWL

Being of a certain age, my learning to swim experience was not of the 'singing-nursery-rhymes-while-playing-with-colourful-toys-buoyed-up-by-inflatables' variety, but rather of the 'throw-her-in-the-deep-end-and-shout-loudly-till-she-comes-to-the-surface' variety!  As a result I learned the breast stroke and stuck with it, as a means of getting from A to B (where A is one side of the pool and B is the other, and not where A is Dover and B is Calais!).

I have however always harboured a burning desire to swim like a pro, ie front crawl, and if ever there was a time to address a burning desire, it was this year.   So... I enrolled for swimming lessons at my local pool.

Now, thanks to the patience and perseverance of my two teachers (yes, one fled the profession half way through - I wonder why), I can now swim a length of front crawl with some degree of style and control.  The more difficult challenge has been putting up with the taunts and ridicule of the 5-6 year old bystanders waiting for their lessons - many of whom are in my class at school!

How many months have I got to practise before August 2012?!?!  Must get to work on the cellulite - it won't look good on the podium or on the front page of the national press!

Challenge 25 - GO TO A FESTIVAL..... (AND REMEMBER IT!!!!)

Strictly speaking, I have been to a festival before - Knebworth 1980 to be precise, -  but apart from a very vague recollection of Santana singing Black Magic Woman, and of getting very wet,  I have absolutely no memory of the occasion.  I thought my 50th year was an ideal opportunity to revisit this experience...... and this time if I didn't remember it, it would be more down to Alzheimers than alcohol abuse.

So off to the Isle of Wight we went... with my one concession to my advancing years being a pre-booked tent/airbed/sleeping bag pitched in the idyllic sounding Tangerine Fields.  I mistakenly thought this constituted luxury camping or even glamping, but fear not - the experience was much more authentic than I intended it to be - in other words I did have to pee on a pile of excrement poking out of a hole in a bench in a portaloo.



My observations are as follows:  being at 'festival' is the only place on earth where:

- you pay nearly £200 to live like a refugee in a third world country
- your response to having a beer glass full of pee poured over you is a mere shrug of the shoulders and a  'cheers mate'
- you spend 90% of your time looking for friends/family etc and 10% listening to music
- you can watch Chase and Status, followed by Tom Jones, and then the Foo Fighters within half an hour of each other and without moving more than 50m
- you would pay the equivalent to a house mortgage for a flushing loo, or failing that, an Immodium
- you can sit on a 'beach' in the middle of a field in the Isle of Wight at 9.30 am drinking mojitos and watching middle aged men in budgie-smugglers playing beach volley ball.
- you get convinced that it is perfectly reasonable to pay a complete entrepreneurial stranger £5 to write your memories down on his 'white board' for posterity!!!!!
- a 50 year old can feel both 20 years old and 100 years old in the same minute.
- a love of live music can unite a crowd of 70,000 diverse and bonkers people, and smooth out any disharmony, conflict or aggression (and yes, I know I sound like a hippy, but it was true!)
- after 3 days of being cold, wet, unwashed, smelling of urine (and not my own), I am contemplating doing it all over again next year!



Thanks to my lovely family for sharing this one with me, and for allowing this prematurely retired hippy to relive her youth.





See you all there next year......