Swimming pools

I had a swimming pool in my backyard growing up, I may have mentioned this already. But I was thinking about it today, since the weather is nice, thinking about swimming. Having a pool in one's own backyard is undeniably great, and I think for two really different reasons. First of all, there are times when it is so nice to just dive into a pool all by oneself, to feel the freedom of having the whole pool to swim back and forth in. I have actually a sort of underwater ballet routine I came up with in my pool, and I can still do it, I still remember it. It takes up the whole pool, so I can only do it when I am alone in there. So that was one thing I liked about having a pool in the backyard. The other thing though was how absolutely great it was to have a pool party, how we could invite our friends over any old day of the week at any time, and it was so much fun. Playing Marco Polo and the Match game, practicing crazy dives, jumping from the jacuzzi into the pool, all of it were things that would happen spontaneously when we got together back there, me and my brother and our friends. That is harder to reenact these days as an adult, but everytime I look at the pool, the memories come back with a smile. 

Pools here in Iceland are public pools, and although the water is a perfect temperature and the settings usually great, they lack the ability to be either of those things I liked about the pool in my backyard. I can never be in those public pools alone (though once I did manage to take a few laps before the swim team came in). And the people there, although I may know a few of them, they are not my friends. The last time I was in the pool here in Keflavik, a co-worker was there as well, and I thought, dear god, now he's seen me in my bathing suit. I was not at all happy about it. 

Funny how privacy only becomes an issue in public. Never occurred to me to be self-conscious about being in my bathing suit in my own backyard, no matter who was around.