It’s like this. I can swim – kind of. I had lessons when I was at school, but those lessons were next to useless. They took place in the local echo-y, Victorian, swimming baths. I hated the noise, and I also carried with me some unpleasant memories of family visits from somewhere in my distant past. The teacher was an old man with a walking stick (you know how every adult looks ancient when you’re 9 years old), and we were all terrified of both him and his booming echoing voice, not to mention that bloomin’ stick.
I eventually learned how to swim by watching and copying other people, and as a result I can do an OK breaststroke. However, my crawl (freestyle) never really moved forward from the point when I stopped having swimming lessons, and overall I considered/consider myself to be a fairly weak swimmer.
Fast-forwarding to 2014.