I recently started swimming again, and I'd forgotten how much of a hub for the community a local pool can be.

But over here are mothers, babies and toddlers (some showing early signs of transvestism - "It's very impressive that he knows about Snow White," says one mum. "Oh yes," comes the reply, "Snow White, Belle, Cinderella, he knows them all. We've been to fancy dress parties as them."), over there the schoolkids learning to swim, out of the pool just in time for the water aerobics with accompanying megamix of pop favourites (Durannies and Kylie vs New Order), with a big German girl floating up and down one of the lanes on her back.

In fact, even when one times one's visit to hit the quietest periods, there's so much vitality that there's very little room for those of us who actually want to put in a few good lengths.

I've never been the strongest swimmer. I think I was about 11 before I was able to keep myself afloat independently, and even now I wouldn't be any kind of challenge for Ian Thorpe, even in terms of shoe size. Hell, I'd struggle to keep up with Equatorial Guinea's Eric the Eel in the pool, even without the added hazards provided by the occasional escaped sticking plaster. And my repertoire's pretty much limited to the breast stroke (insert your own double entendre here).

You'd hope that a swimming pool would provide more than a quarter of its capacity for actual swimming. But that's proving to be a rare treat. So those of us who want exercise rather than indulge in a bit of splashy-splashy are forced to share two lanes, squeezed out to the edge of the pool, going up one and down the other, with me playing the role of tractor on a long Cornish country lane, all the family saloons trudging in my wake.

All of this is tolerable, when compared with the worst affliction of public baths: teenage boys. The less said about them the better, other than they ought not to be allowed. Anywhere. If we ignore them, they might go away.

Is there a point to any of this? Not really. I'm just getting it off my chest. Except to say the one unbeatable aspect about the pool is that it's where Mum used to take us after school when we lived in north London more than 20 years ago.

I like it when life goes in circles. Unlike swimming.