Funky Nosejob

We regularly get children who have been booked in for swimming lessons by parents who can’t swim. The parents’ inability to swim makes it more likely that the children have never been in a swimming pool in their life. This is especially true recently as lockdowns have meant pools have been closed, or only allowing limited numbers access, for over a year. If you turn up and hand your child, who has never been in a pool, over to a complete stranger for a swimming lesson, then about 80% of the time that child won’t get in the water. Of those 80%, about half won’t even leave their parent’s side to go on poolside. A child’s first experience in a swimming pool needs to be with an adult they know and trust in the water with them. We also need to separate out learning to swim and teaching the dangers of swimming in unsafe places. As a child, I had this advert that made it abundantly clear why you didn’t go swimming in quarries, canals, etc. My reasons for wanting to learn to swim were somewhat less honourable… I didn’t want to keep losing my bird!

Have worked as a swimming teacher for the past 5 years, as part of my slowdown to retirement. Every year, just before the summer holidays, we run a water safety week whereby lessons consist of being taught about being safe around water, survival skills and rescue skills all at an appropriate level for age and ability. The children are encouraged to turn up wearing an old t-shirt and shorts on top of their swimming costumes. The look of alarm on their faces when they first let go of the side whilst wearing wet clothes is astounding. It is an experience that most of my generation will be familiar with from rescuing rubber bricks from the bottom of the school pool whilst wearing pyjamas. We also teach them to “fall” into the water then float on their backs for 30 seconds, shouting for help, before swimming back to the side. You could argue, and some parents do, that doing these skills in a swimming pool under controlled conditions is pointless. My opinion is that if someone suddenly finds themselves in that situation, any previous similar experiences can only be beneficial.

Marcus Ericsson. Another driver who seemed to get a seat based solely on the sponsorship he brought with him. Useless in the rain and an accident waiting to happen in the dry.

Look out your best bucket hat and meet me down the shopping centre mall. A number 5 from 1999.

Possibly, but I think we all know who the real puppet masters are…

Every 2 years starting pretty much on your 50th birthday. My first one involved taking samples for three days in a row and smearing them onto a postcard sized sheet of cardboard. Thankfully, we’ve moved onto a single sample collected on the end of a plastic stick and subsequently sealed in a vial. I posted off my most recent this morning which arrived 7 months behind schedule, probably because testers have dealing with something more important recently.

Moving away from songs that could only be from the 1980s, this timeless performance could be from any decade from 1950s to early 2000s. It ended up as a number 22 in1988.

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Now existing on a different tangent on the time plane. The machine relied on …

I invented a fully functioning time machine about 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the ramifications were so disastrous that I had to go back in time and stop myself inventing it.

Now existing on a different tangent on the time plane. The machine relied on the realisation that time was a planar dimension rather than simply linear.

I invented a fully functioning time machine about 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the ramifications were so disastrous that I had to go back in time and stop myself inventing it.

What’s her date of birth?

Saturday night masses can be like that.

I’d forgotten about Damon Hill driving car number zero. I enjoyed it at the time as I was a big fan of Dick Dastardly as a child and double zero was his car number in Wacky Races.