Sorting Hats and Giant Noodles

Today was the beginning of another very wet week. I have been going to swimming lessons for some years now and have progressed through the various levels of achievements, measured here by the colour of your hat. I am Purple Helmet, no sniggering, and only the heady (hoho) heights of Silver Hat remain to be reached, and that's when you join a club, play water polo and become a lifeguard.

Recently I was headhunted into the 'Talent Lane' which is like a prep school for the Silver Hat group, and very tough it is too, with the extra hour of ploughing up and down. But today my class at school walked down to the pool and thus began the Sorting. First, the coach said all Purple Carapaces down to the other end while we sort out the lesser swimmers by hat colour, see what we're up against.

Then we did a few widths (yes, not even lengths) and waited for the assessments to filter their way down to the non-swimmers. There were about 10 of them. This is mildly sad in people aged 10 and let's hope that they get recruited into the splendid lessons offered by our local pools really soon, and they too can be Purple Domes in no time. Child O was wearing 4 armbands and had one of those giant noodles between his legs but he froze solid with fear, poor chap, and had to be escorted into the changing rooms, rigid noodle and all.

Then just before we left, Coach Jenny said have a quick dive and so I did that and they said who was that masked man with the Olympic-quality dive and they made me do it again so all the class could see and they filmed me diving so they could display my epic talents back in the classroom. It's just the same dive Bud taught me 18 months ago in Mallorca, but it works for me. I like being Poster Boy and Demo Model, first time for everything.

Incidentally, I have a Cool Mummy. She plays Minecraft with me on the X-Box and now she plays Pokémon against me too.