My local pool has become much busier over the years, particularly with regular morning swimmers. There was a time when I could have driven an army duck through the water without causing the slightest alarm. 

I remember one cool, wet day - the last day of the school year almost 30 years ago - when I dashed from the staffroom and drove back to the Mountains hoping that the pool would be open. It was, though utterly empty save for one huddled attendant, the steam rising languidly from the warm water.

Nowadays, it hard to find a space anywhere, with two or three to a lane and lots of folks doing exercises of one sort or another. There are more eccentrics too, bless them, for whom the rules of etiquette have no place. They bob and wander like ageing mines, heedless of other swimmers, ready to explode on contact.

It makes things interesting, to say the least.