24

No, it's not my birthday. Last time I was 24, Helmut Kohl was still Kanzler.

That's actually 24 x 50 metres. You see, I've taken up swimming. You see, I've been suffering from the curse of the contemporary desk worker, viz a lack of movement in the upper body, apart from intensive but minute movements in the general vicinity of a keyboard, which have been bringing on the old RSI.

It's not even that I'm particularly unfit. Regular intensive cycling has given me legs like treetrunks and buttocks of steel, but leaves me with stickman arms and an abdomen which is showing signs of reverting into its natural, penguin-like state.

Something Had To Be Done. The obvious answer was of course swimming, an activity I've been studiously avoiding since I was about 14 because it's an activity I associate with loud, noisy pools filled with a mixture of chlorine, annoying small children, even more annoying large children and also annoying and irritating teenagers, all guarded over by cryptofascist whistleblowing Bademeisters.

So, off to the grandly named Europa Sportpark in the Landsberger Allee it was. This is a complex built as part of Berlin's chronically unsuccessful bid for the 2000 Olympics (and be glad it failed, because if you think Berlin is poor now, imagine what it'd be like if it had had to pay for an Olympics as well. We'd probably be lighting the streets with candles).

Unfortunately, without my glasses I'm as blind as a bat which had its sonar ruined by spending its teenage years in techno clubs, and it took me a while to navigate from the changing area to the pool itself. Partly because I had the impression the swimming was taking place in the actual Olympic pool, which is on one side, but there's a 50m pool on the other side which is where the hoi-polloi such as myself are permitted.

It turned out to be quite nice. Fairly quiet - lots of serious people doing serious swimming, no teenagers burning off their excess hormones or whatever it is teenagers like to do these days, and you can barely taste the chlorine. Even the Bademeisters are cool and laid back, sitting around their little glass kiosk for the most part, except for the occasional emergency massage.

The only problem remaining was the actual swimming, as it occurred to me I've never actually learnt to swim. I am well acquainted with the art of not drowning though, and I can wave my arms and legs around in a manner which propels myself through the water in the general direction of forwards, but that trick where you pretend to be a whale on acid has, up until now, eluded me. So I tried my luck in the lanes reserved for the elderly, infirm, obese and anyone else who likes to keep their head above water all the time. The first time I managed a whole 7 lengths before various extremities started failing in differing, alarming ways, and was constantly being overtaken by people who can probably still remember the war. It would probably be more efficient, from a transport point of view, to just walk.

However, every time since then has, to my delight, been a slight improvement, and last Friday I was not only overtaking people as young as 55, I also managed a record 24 lengths. Although by the time I got to the last two, I believe I was wheezing and gasping, but that was alright because it was late in the evening and all the types with the Moses complex (i.e. who seem to take it personally that the waters fail to part before them, and attempt to make it do so by imbibing half of it and splashing the other half over the side of the pool) had gone home.

Some rough and ready calculations show that if this rate of improvement keeps up, I'll be breaking the sound barrier by 2013 or so. So if any time you see a wet and dripping penguin suddenly flying past, it might be me.