More lane rage

I haven't had a good old moan about swimming for a long time, but recently I was reminded of the frustrations which swimming engenders.

I thought Sunday morning might be quiet. How wrong could I be? It was like the M4 on a Bank Holiday weekend. Having scanned the horizon for any possible spaces, I decided my best bet was to follow this (nice)woman who looked to be going about the same speed as me. A bit like dolphins at the wake of a boat, the only time you have to divert from your path is when you pass them coming towards you as you go the other way. My own invented swimming etiquette demands that I be the one to take avoidance action, since I am encroaching on her lane. Ergo, someone who comes in after me should do the same for me.

Oh no. In comes this exocet missile of a woman and I realise, almost too late, that her etiquette (or lack thereof) does not follow the same rules as mine. There is no way she is going to move, which means I then have to avoid a collision with the nice lady who let me follow her. I dodge round, doing my speediest crawl, before getting back into my very narrow lane and resuming my more leisurely breast stroke. The next time I ended up at the rail with Nice Lady (which only happens every ten lengths or so) I apologised for my actions, and she was very gracious about accepting, commenting that this kind of swimming wasn't 'very relaxing'. I agreed wholeheartedly. I really wanted to stay at the rail a while and have a good old bitch about Madam Exocet and her lack of manners, but swimming isn't really the time to do that. We're all on a mission, which is to do our lengths as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there.

I tried to send subliminal evil thoughts to my enemy, to make her have some kind of guilty conscience for what she'd done to me, but I don't think it worked. And I did wonder what would happen if we all took her stand and simply refused to compromise (ie divert our course). There'd be a multiple pile up before you knew it. At least the lifeguard, commatose with boredom and bitter and twisted about having to sit there on a Sunday morning after a hard Saturday night's clubbing, would have something to do.