Monday Swim

I've got a few days off work so it's kind of my ambition to get some tidying done at home. Yesterday I went out a run in the morning and then was back in plenty of time to get cracking. But Peter had 'floated' the idea that I might come for an evening swim. He's been going fairly regularly - or half regularly - outdoor swimming on a Monday or a Tuesday evening. For me it's usually out of the question because I'm up at the crack of dawn the next day - but I wouldn't be this time. There were a gang of people going to Gladhouse Reservoir. The forecast looked good for it and on top of that there was supposed to be a full moon. I looked up the rising time of the full moon and it said 1910hrs. So about when we'd be there...It seemed like too good an opportunity in a way.

And yet I haven't been outdoors swimming in probably a year - and even though I didn't have to be up in the morning, I am increasingly not an evening person - and the thought of lowering myself into some cold dark water when I'd normally be eating my tea and watching netflix with my feet up in the sitting room wasn't that appealing.

But tired of the sound of myself saying No all the time I went. And in order to do so I bumped the cleaning and had a little afternoon nap instead. When Peter came home bouncing with joy and ready to go swimming I had that brain lethargy you have when you've had a nap. I could barely get any words out. We had some mild quarrelling over what the best way is to get to Gladhouse from this side of town - and we did take a very narrow road which wasn't strictly 'the wrong way', but I'm not sure what the plan was if anything had of come along the other way.

I'm a bit short of action shots as somehow or other I let Peter take the (my!) waterproof camera. He went off in a group of 6 who were all going to go round some island in the far distance. I opted to swim to a little nearby island. I was quite satisfied with that. My swimming isn't that great any more. I used to enjoy getting into a rhythm, but now I'm tired out before I even get into a rhythm. A bit of practice would improve things quite quickly I'm sure but...well... you can only do so much. So anyway I went for a putter in the dark water and went to the island which was full of bears. Okay, not full of bears.

And then I swam back to shore and got dried off and dressed in my duvet jacket and took pictures from the shore and before long some heads appeared in the water in the far distance. 

In the meantime I was surrounded by a charming swarm of insects which seemed to be non-bitey but they made me itch anyway. Here's one on my arm.

Once everyone was back and counted in I sat in the car taking pictures out of the window of the car which wasn't filled with naked bottoms. But talking of which, where the hell was the full moon?

Well I don't know. Maybe I read the moon tables for the wrong year or something. I got up for a pee in the night and it was riding high like a torch in the sky. But there was no sign of it on the way home from the swim. There was a lovely golden sky though, so we settled for that.