I've just signed up to David Lloyd, the uber-swish health club, and, you know, it feels like I belong... sniff...

But the deciding factor was the plush swimming pool.

It's curious how that came to be the big pull because I only really taught myself to swim during my recent sojourn to Cornwall. It was a long time coming and not helped by an early experience when an hirsute instructor decided to try a Trust Exercise with me on my first lesson and failed to catch me. As I foundered on the bottom of the pool, watching his feet back away, I avowed that that would be the last penny that man-beast extorted from my mother. I stopped thrashing and just laid there. If I could've, I would've sparked up a cigarette in resignation. I was five.

But it set me back. My confidence was shot and when I finally managed to develop a doggy-paddle that would get me across the 10m I needed for my first certificate, my peers were collecting their bronze, silver and gold certificates. The thought of going up to collect a certificate at the age of ten with a bunch of children half my age was too much to bear. I never did and I officially left primary school a non-swimmer.

In the years that followed, my exposure to the pool became even more infrequent until, eventually, the idea of ever mastering the art became an absurdity. I no longer needed to swim because I never intended to catch a boat that would sink.

That attitude unexpectedly changed a month ago. We hired a Cornish cottage for a week with its own pool and I suddenly realised I had a hitherto unquenched thirst for chlorine. I bought trunks and went mad. I spent longer in that pool that week than I typically do at work.

By the end, I still couldn't fucking swim properly.

However, I had re-ignited a flame. I had caught the bug and began pitching up to the local leisure centre with my newly acquired goggles whenever I had the opportunity. Unfortunately, my efforts were constantly inhibited by a programme that was dominated by schools and classes for just about anyone but me. The final straw was broken when I took my young son in to the Baby Pool and learnt it had been impromptly booked for a private party. Undeterred, I took him into the Main Pool where two grown chavs proceeded to have a big, scary fight.

But swimming was now in my blood. I just needed somewhere more civilised to practice.

When I learnt David Lloyd were running a promotion, I jumped at the chance. A huge state-of-the-art gym, multiple tennis courts, but, more than that, a beautiful, clean, uncrowded swimming pool.

Two weeks on, I'm still shit at swimming. My breast-stroke is about as progressive as treading water and I don't know how to breathe when I'm doing the front crawl. However, I've taken my weaknesses and turned them into strengths: I have a new discipline. I now do the front crawl underwater and try to travel as far as I can before my lungs give out and I float limply to the surface.

I'm almost there though. I've almost swum the full length of the pool and I'm going to keep going until I do. Those are my options now: glory or being fished out on a hook.




To glory.