How To Get Away With Murder

Swimming With The Fishes Edition

We’re in Leeds, back when I was a student. Let’s say 10 years ago. I said LET’S SAY 10 YEARS AGO. A time I still have anxiety dreams about. Not because I didn’t love university, I really did. That’s where I got into making TV in the student “studio” (and got rejected by the student radio station, my villain origin story). Where I met the My Dad Wrote A Porno boys/men and where I volunteered in the union’s vegan co-op so I could get wholesale discount on chocolate soya milk. You know, those willlllddddd student dayzzzz. Crazzzaayyyyy.

And yet…the anxiety dreams. They fall into two main categories:

1. A variation of the one you have all probably had; it's the forgotten deadline, the essential module that you haven’t completed so you can’t graduate, it’s the whole year to complete the dissertation that you have somehow entirely squandered.

2. The “I think I killed a man in Leeds International Pool” one

Oh, Leeds International Pool, you wally. A place of great lore, and it’s moniker one of great promise. So the legend goes, it was built to much excitement and fanfare. A jewel in the city’s aquatic crown (which sounds like something King Triton would wear, made of a circle of conga-ing Yellow Tangs). But, allegedly, in some design botch-up, the blueprints for the main pool hadn't accounted for the thickness of the tiles that lined the pool walls, meaning when it was built its overall length was a whisper shy of the 50m requirement to officially be considered an Olympic pool. So no international championships for Leeds. Not even the county go-to, apparently everyone swam off to Sheffield for their meets instead.

As I say, I don’t know that this is true, but the thought gives me a stomach ache. Imagine realising, in the middle of the night, long after sign-off that you had forgotten to add that one, essential, measurement. Someone senior would have flagged it, surely? The CAD programme would have demanded a thickness for that feature automatically? No? But, in fact, you are the only one who thought of it and now it’s too late. So you just wait…2…3…5 years for the project to be completed. Why would anyone measure it this far down the line? The first semi-finals they host, you’re home and dry. Right? But delays. Council red tape. Contractor issues. The project drags on like a cursed Grand Design. And the whole time you’re the only one who holds the secret. Just a few millimetres between you and your old, carefree life. You win awards, you get promotions, your wife falls pregnant with a much longed for baby girl, you can’t enjoy ANY of it, because, The Tiles. You move to a new company, they “loved what you did with the Leeds International Pool”. They don’t know. Every tap on the shoulder, every “can you pop into my office when you get in today” email, a chill down the spine. It’s a rounding error! What’s a little 1cm between friends? Actually don’t answer that. (Stopppp. You’re embarrassing yourselves.)

Perhaps because of this mishap then, the day I went, I wasn’t met with something resembling those jolly renders that architect practices produce, with lots of trees at the entrance and a mum with a pram strolling in the periphery. I got changed in the very dank and decrepit locker room. The mood of the place was; we haven’t been shut down, but we haven’t not been shut down. The pool was empty, save for a handful of other swimmers, including one very old man. Chekhov’s Old Man.

Even though the pool was so undersubscribed there were still passive aggressive signs everywhere, the ones usually reserved for crowd control issues. At the end of the lanes were the suggested speeds, with anti-clockwise instructions for turning.

Now, I’m a decent swimmer. Not Olympic standard - good job, I’d have been in the wrong place! etc etc. But I’ve been known to hold my own next to a Garmin wearing maniac at London Fields Lido. And I won the Front Crawl race at school. Hate to brag. *quieter voice* As it turned out I was actually competing in the Breast Stroke event, and so was disqualified, but I think my point remains.

So ‘Slow’ wasn’t an option, frankly. And I’m not arrogant enough to jump straight into ‘Fast’, and there was a mirrored goggle-wearer in there already, who looked the business. In ‘Medium’ I found myself behind the Old Man.

I did a couple of laps following him. As he moved at the speed of continental drift, I’ll admit, I was getting a bit annoyed. He was in the wrong lane. Clearly not Medium by anyone’s metric. Having tried to hang back and give him a head start, I started to gain on him for a 3rd or 4th time.

Importantly, I was 19, I knew nothing of the ways of the world. I couldn’t drive, so wasn’t even able to try and transfer the rules of the road to the rules of the pool. BUT, I was, and remain, terrified of getting in trouble. What I certainly wasn’t going to do was put myself in a position where I was being told off by the Old Man, or even, God forbid, a lifeguard. Overtaking him seemed aggressive. Alpha. Obnoxious. I’d win the battle but lose the moral war. Was it even allowed? Was there a sign for that? Bombing, definitely out, famously. Heavy petting wasn’t a risk in this case. But I couldn’t remember if overtaking was sanctioned?!

So, my brain offered up an innovative solution: just UNDERtake him. Yes! I’d dive down, glide beneath him like those aerial videos of surfers on their boards, oblivious that they are floating above a Killer Whale or Great White. Then I’d heroically resurface…15 (?) meters ahead of him and continue my lap, now in the lead position. If he was glancing away, there was a good chance he wouldn’t even notice. An act of charity, which would allow him to save face. I wouldn’t be thanked, but I’d have done a good deed and that would be enough for me. Maybe later, in the showers, someone would come up to me and tell me they’d seen it from afar, tell me it was a really classy move. I’d shrug, it was nothing.

Unfortunately, the errors in this approach came thick and fast. My first was that I wasn’t wearing goggles. Madness. Unperturbed, and sightless, I took a cheek-inflating breath and dived (dove? doved??) deep. Too deep as it turned out. I promptly began running out of breath. But no matter, I thought, up we go! After all this was the plan all along, just a bit sooner than expected. I just wished at that point I could see, but why really? It’s not the Great Barrier Reef. A glimpse at the famous tiles would have been nice, but that could wait. So I headed for the surface, ready to gulp that thick, warm, chemically air. But my hands didn’t break the tension of the water as I expected, I didn’t have the relief of refilling my lungs. My fingertips hit something soft. Sinewy. For too long, I pushed and prodded my hands all over an ice sheet of flesh.

Eventually, I broke free and managed to resurface. Gulping and wheezing, and with water in my eyes, I realised I had rotated in the chaos and popped up directly in front of the old man, inches away from his face. I gasped for air like I’d just been resuscitated. He recoiled and started splashing, now trying to stop the water going down his throat. But his flailing wasn’t keeping him above the water line, the shock had rendered him an even worse swimmer. Sorry, not the time, but I cannot stress enough how he wasn’t a Medium. As he became more distressed, I began to regain my calm. Sort of like his ebbing life force was topping up mine.

I caught my breath, tried to apologise for the shock and for the breaching into his abdomen (was it his abdomen?! Argghhh) but…there were no words. So, I just swam away from the wreck. A swim ‘n’ run. I speedily completed my length and flopped my arms over the end of the pool, treading water, waiting for him to catch me up so I could say sorry again. But he didn’t appear. After a while I looked back, and he was gone. Not in the slow or fast lane (obvs). Not on the poolside, or on the diving board. That would have been bold. He’d gone. Back to the bleak changing rooms, shamed or traumatised? Or to the bottom of the pool, sucked into the vents with the plasters and the hair balls?

I got out and made my way to the showers, glancing back at the calm water.

I wonder if I was continuing a curse. Like the Leeds International Pool designer, I had majorly miscalculated. Like them, would I be in limbo for years, waiting for someone to share a story about a sweet (though I cannot stress enough, VERY slow) old man who met his maker in the Medium lane?

In his memory, I go back to the pool once a year and complete a short contemplative swim. Ha! I don’t. Obviously. That’s ridiculous. Plus, it was demolished in 2009. Instead, I do what I think, from our brief time together, he would have wanted. I’ve turned it into content on Radio 1 and Would I Lie To You, and now Substack. Is there a greater honour?!

PS The other night I told my pal Greg James (you wouldn’t know him), about writing this and he drew my attention to another fantastic example of the genre, please see the picture. I’m obsessed with the line “the hotel’s architect was Italian and spoke meters, while the London architect spoke feet”. Hahahhhaahahhahhaha.

Tell me things.

Love you byyyye x