Apr 16, 2022 – willowdot21

Welcome back to Throwback Thursday. Lauren is hosting again this week and Maggie will be back next Thursday. Head over to her blog to get the details, and then join in!

This week’s prompt is: Learning to Swim.

It took me until I was nearly forty to learn to swim! It all started when I was about two and half maybe three. Mum and Dad had taken the whole family out for a picnic near Oxford on the river Isis . All was going well until I fell in, to this day I can remember the warm sunshine, the noise of everyone enjoying themselves. Then suddenly splosh I was under water, scared, everything had gone muffled. I remember coming to the surface only to go back under. Then I felt dad’s hands under my chin and shoulder as he yanked me out, litterally kicking and screaming. I remember that but not what happened next.

We did not have swimming lessons at school and I very rarely went to the local baths with friends as I could not swim! If friends were visiting a Lido then I would go along and sun bathe. I rarely wore a swimming costume because I was too often told I was fat at school.

I did however make sure the boys were all good swimmers so they could enjoy all water sports whilst in beavers, cubs, scouts and beyond.

In my late thirties I was working at children’s home directly across the road from where we lived. There was a beautiful swimming pool over there encased in a plastic bubble so it was always tropical in there. We were never allowed to take our children there during term time but in the summer holidays when the children were sent to other homes we were. So I would take the boys over there with their friends. That’s were I learned to swim ….it was warm, quiet and calm and I had friends and the boys to encourage me.

I am not a confident swimmer and I never will be, but at least I can just about manage a few widths, and hold my own on holidays! …I have never fancied cruising as the sight of water to the horizon scares me ridged. I have managed a few river cruises because I can see land on both sides. Mind you I do love the sound of the sea and the beach as long as it quite.

Yesterday Linda popped in to say Happy Easter and to give us our SoCs prompt for this week , here’s what she said.”Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “nose/noes/knows.”Use one, use ’em all, bonus points if you use all three. Have fun!“

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Now when I was young so much younger than today-ay-ay…

Hang on that’s a song and has nothing to do with the title of this post…. Though I could do with some help!

Seriously what I was going to say before I digressed was when I was a child I used to get eyes/ayes and noes and nose confused. Especially if dad was listening to an important broadcast from the houses of Parliament. You see when they took ( and they still do exactly the same now) the votes Mr Speaker would say “The ayes to the right the noes to the left” then they would count the vote. Well my strange childhood mind could see a pile of eyes on the right of the floor and a pile of noses to the left. Oddly enough this did not worry me. Also there was a lot of “ear earing ” going on during speaches but we won’t get into that now!
Well I have grown up now, (honest I have) and I finally know the difference between eyes,ayes, know,nose and noes. ….Truly it’s not my fault that English has so many words that sound the same even though spelt quite differently and we are expected to just know the difference.
I know now that it’s aye captain and not eye captain…. Even if a pirate Captain might only have one eye… nower days most captains, airline, ships or army have two eyes and rightly so!

I could go on but I know that would just cause so much confusion so I shall say right here right now….