School swimming daze
By Brian Clegg
Generally speaking, I had a great time at secondary school. This was the Manchester Grammar School, then part of the state school system as a direct grant grammar school. The only part of school I truly hated was sport. This was nothing new. My junior school had rather strange underground changing rooms, and I remember hiding there during some physical activities.
Sometimes I could find a degree of accommodation on the sports field at MGS. When we played football, we were plagued by two dogs, which invariably invaded the pitch, chasing the ball. I managed to gain the position of dog wrangler, keeping me safely away from the activity. But I couldn’t get out of the weirdest of our sports activities – swimming. I can firmly say that there was an aspect of our swimming lessons that had the potential to result in criminal prosecutions today.
We had swimming lessons at my junior school too – I can’t remember anything about the actual swimming, but I enjoyed the excursion to the baths on Ellen Smith’s rather snazzy coaches, and fondly remember the drink machine disposing hot bovril, something I had never experienced before or since. There was no need for a coach at grammar school – we had our own pool.
I’ve been dancing around this long enough. The oddity about our swimming lessons was the swimwear. We didn’t have any. Swimming lessons were naked. I’ve never seen an explanation for this oddity. It was an all boys school, and when I was there we only had a couple of female teachers who never came near the pool. Yet I can’t for the life of me see the benefit of skinny dipping swimming lessons – and the opportunities for abuse are all too obvious.
I ought to stress that nothing untoward did happen in the lessons I attended, either in interactions between boys and teachers or between students. It was all above board. But I look back now and shake my head in disbelief. Different times, indeed.
Image from Unsplash+ by Allison Saeng.
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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.
Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/school-swimming-daze.html
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