I’m attending one of the first events held by a newly created university swimming super league.
I’m there with my family. We’re all wearing these plump oversize white sports hoodies. The overhead ones, with the big front pockets, like those worn by American college sports fans.
There’s an odd feeling to the experience: the sense of anticipation you associate with a big sports event mixed with the family-first vibe of a school-level competition.
The names of all the university swim teams are being announced. Simultaneously, their logos are being projected one by one onto a giant screen up high in the atrium of the venue. Each badge is rendered in the league’s brand colours of white, with powder-blue accents.
We cheer the names as they’re announced. Most of the universities are American but there are a few UK institutions. Some names are familiar (the University of Chicago) and others are new to me (‘Primrose’?). One of them gets no reaction at all, and I feel bad for the team.
Competition time
I’m waiting for my American alma mater (the University of Kansas) to make an appearance but it never does. I used to swim frequently in the university pool (although only for general fitness – I’ve never swum at anything close to a competitive level).
As I consider KU’s absence at the meeting, it dawns on me that this is a breakaway competition, like the proposed European Super League or World Series Cricket. So it seems some institutions didn’t want to pay to be part of it.
I’m much younger in the dream. I’m back in my early twenties, just as I was when I attended university.
In fact, at some point it transpires that I’m here to compete at the event, which I didn’t realise.
Soon I find myself standing in a preparation area amid a throng of competitors, male and female. We’re at the threshold of an incredibly wide swimming pool – an absurd number of Olympic-size lanes stretches off down the length of the building into the distance.
A din of voices echoes throughout the vast space. I’m standing, almost naked, in an unfamiliar environment, with no idea of the competitive programme ahead of me.
I’ve had no instructions about any of it. I feel very unprepared for the whole thing – the icy water, the pressure of races and relays in front of a crowd.
Another unusual development: after consultation with my parents, it seems that I’ve decided to come to the event equipped with several fancy dress outfits, which I’m clutching in their plastic packaging.
The element of surprise
I’ll wear these outfits, which Mum and Dad helped me pick out, to try to get a competitive advantage in the pool. Or at least, I’ll use them as a way to enliven proceedings.
I open the first packet, which contains a mad scientist outfit. It includes square orange goggles – not swimming goggles but a plastic simulacrum of industrial blow-torching goggles.
The competitor standing beside me in the practice area looks at my outfit and frowns. “Why have you got these to compete in?” she asks. She sounds more suspicious than curious.
“Just… the element of surprise. Just to confuse you,” I say joshingly.
“Like… you’ll look underneath your arm – when you’re doing crawl – you’ll look back and you’ll see this,” I say, pointing at my mad scientist outfit.
Perhaps unwisely, I continue with a bit of false braggadocio: “Or maybe, like, I’ll sellotape a photo of your mum to my face, and you’ll see that, and you’ll be like woah.”
As I outline that last bizarre hypothetical bit of gamesmanship, the woman turns and wordlessly dives into the waters of the practice area, simply to end our conversation.
She doesn’t want to spend another second talking to me, because she knows I’m crazy.
One size fits all
Mum and Dad seemed to think this was a good idea, but I’m increasingly convinced that the fancy dress gimmick will not be well-received.
People will see it as an unwelcome distraction, a trivialisation of everyone else’s commitment and hard work – like Eddie the Eagle at the 1988 Olympics.
I busy myself by adjusting the square orange goggles, to try and make them more comfortable and secure. But they’re poorly made – the elastic has no give in it – and they cut into the flesh around my eye sockets.
It’s just a cheap one-size-fits-all nonsense costume, I realise. The kind you buy in a rush at a joke shop, on the way to a party, because you couldn’t be bothered to put time and effort into creating a costume yourself.
With dawning disappointment and a rising sense of panic, I realise that all the outfits I’ve brought to the pool are like this one. They’re all really cheap and I can’t really wear them.
They’ll also be really uncomfortable to swim in.
Image by Colin King, from The Word Detective by Heather Amery, published 1982 by Usborne. Photo depicted under Fair Use allowance. No copyright infringement intended..
