France Vs. Owen The Modern Pentathlete

...Aaaaaaaggggghhhh! An entire swimming pool worth of bureaucracy!

I'm just back from a swim at the local pool. Despite the cool waters, I feel my blood boil as I reel from yet another attack of a petty French jobsworth.

Determined to get my reduced pass for the pool this time (see my last Pentathlon post) I brought my drivers licence for my age (you have to be less than 26), my Parisian rent allowance card and a bank statement with my address (you have to live in Paris). On this, my third attempt, they finally conceded and gave me the 10 entries pass for €12.50, compared to the normal price of €21.50, so I was in reasonable form as I made my way downstairs to the changing rooms.

Despite my good intentions I hadn't made it to the morning session (7.00 - 8.30 - bizarre timetable here) and I landed smack in the middle of the busy lunch session. Nonetheless I readied myself quickly for the pool, threw my stuff in a locker and got ready to do what I could in the limited space available.

As I was moving down the pool in my resplendant new Jammers (long swimming shorts - here's a shot of me in them to the right) the two life-guards on watch stopped me and started babbling at me in French.

"You can't wear those in here, they're banned."
I looked at them utterly confused, I knew you had to wear tight swimming trunks but I had no idea why these would be a problem.
"You'll have to wear shorter ones. It's alright this but next time you'll have to have proper tiny little man-thong speedos (I may be paraphrasing there). You can't wear cycling shorts in here."
"But these are Speedos and don't use them for cycling because they are swimming trunks. That and I never cycle!"
"Well guys were coming in straight from the gym in there cycling shorts into the pool and we can't be checking the label on everyones shorts."
"So you mean I have to buy new shorts?" What I wanted to say I didn't know all the profanities for and I never could have repeated here.
"Well you can use them for cycling", chimed in David Hasselhoff's assistant.

So that put me in great form for my swim. On a positive note I already felt a massive improvement from last week. Unfortunately 50m at a time was about all I could manage not because I was too tired but because the pool was so ridiculously crowded. Rather than have the pool organised into lanes according to speed, the pool has one third left as a sort of paddling pool for grown-ups then rest divided into three lanes according to stroke. The central and one would presume slow lane for Front-crawl and back-crawl, a lane for breast-stroke and an outside "fast" lane for crawl and back-crawl. This system doesn't work at all.

I stayed for the most part in the outside fast lane which had about 10 swimmers of completely different speeds on a small 25m pool. It was an absolute disaster. The main cause of the problems was this fricking whale who was swimming at a rate of less than a length to every two of mine and somehow managed to sprawl herself across the entire fricking lane with the most hideous stroke I've ever seen. Then there was other old dears swimming slow breast stroke in the lane and yet others doing hideous back-crawl. Then the was one muppet doing only his arms on front-crawl - in the bloody fast lane!

It's so irritating but I think I need to find a new pool or a new time. I have no intention of buying new trunks because of those dickheads and I have no intention of having to go that slowly again. The problem is this pool is just so convienient for me and all the others would involve a metro journey.

I'm going to try and get to the pool for the early session once this week and see how that goes...