Signalling my intentions

The lanes at the morning swim were reduced from four to three. Half the pool was now for slow swimmers, and I know my place. The signals were clear enough – clockwise for slow, anti-clockwise for fast, clockwise for medium, all arranged so that where there might be arms and legs straying outside the lines of coloured floats, impact is minimal because everyone is theoretically going the same way at these points.

Except that they are not, because the slow lane is not a lane any more. It is a free for all. I signal my intentions by moving off clockwise as instructed and virtually hugging the side of the pool but there is a backstroke swimmer bearing down on me. I take evasive action but it takes me into the path of someone coming up behind me very fast for the slow lane. There are now ten of us and we are more or less split between those obviously trying to follow the rules and those who seem oblivious to them. Goggles and caps apparently give license to ignore any signage at all.

When in Newton Abbott recently, I was surprised by some random signalling - this semaphore signal gantry at the junction of Torquay Road and Brunel Road. Chris took a quick photo when we stopped at the adjacent, roadside version. I was in the right lane, thank goodness, or rather the left lane - the slow one.

It was great to see this reminder of Newton Abbott’s former importance as a railway junction – once with its own sheds and workshops, of course. Railway book publishers, David and Charles, begun by David St John Thomas in 1960, occupied the site after the railway vacated the premises. They moved on to Exeter in 2015, as part of F+W Media.

Back in the pool, I completed my forty lengths in an astonishingly slow time and just as the whistle was blown for the end of the session. I though about querying the decision to reduce the number of slow lanes from two to one and effectively creating an “anything goes”, choppy water, slowcoach zone. Then I thought, “Naaagh”, or something similar.