High drama at the pool.

There I was quietly swimming to and fro, doing lengths of the pool at the end of the morning, almost the afternoon. I had been to yoga as usual, this being Thursday morning, but we had not done anything very energetic. Loli had made us learn a series of relaxation routines and we had done a range of breathing exercises, with lots of encouragement to “abrir el pecho”. There really is a limit,however, to how far down and back my shoulders can go before I fall over backwards. Anyway, we had not expended a great deal of energy and I felt the need for a bit more exercise.

So when I got home, I put on my swimsuit, gathered my towel and other necessary paraphernalia and headed down to the pool. As it was still rather early I had the pool to myself more or less: something of a luxury. Later in the afternoon it's usually full of smallish boys having races, even smaller ones learning to swim and bigger ones showing off their prowess at doing handstands underwater, to impress the girls, of course. But at that time of day, with shadow still on the pool, I had it to myself, apart from one sunbather who put her foot in the water and thought better of it and one other lady swimmer who did two lengths and then retired.

So, as I said, there I was swimming to and fro, feeling rather like the dormouse in Alice in Wonderland. I am not a very strong swimmer. I do a rather pedestrian (if you can use that word to describe swimming) breast stroke and occasionally float on my back. I am happiest when I know I can put my foot down without my head being underwater if I get in a panic. Our fairly small, kidney shaped pool, deep enough to swim but not to get out of your depth, is perfect for me. I swim round and round, not unlike the dormouse swimming round and round in Alice's tears.

So,there I was, in the pool, swimming along, when I heard a scream, shortly followed by a rather distinct splat. Time to out my foot down and find out what was going on. A lady was looking out of a sixth floor window and shouting, “¡Se tiró Kitty!” And, indeed, there was a small tortoiseshell cat, looking confused but jumping around, still able to move then. Phew!

We told the screaming lady we could see where the cat was and that it appeared to be OK. A young man who had done a few lengths of the pool and given up before I went down (I saw him from our window) bravely climbed over the fence and tied to catch Kitty. She was having none of it and allowed no-one near until her rather tearful owner managed to pick her up. Despite the tears and the obvious panic of the owner who let her cat jump out of the window, Kitty appeared to have used up one of her nine lives and come away unscathed.

As for me, I went back to doing dormouse impressions for a while longer and then went in for lunch.