One of the factors responsible for the drift in my memory that occurred in the 34 years I didn’t visit New Zealand was that I had been training for cadetship in Surf Life Saving in 1974/75 and was swimming up to 1200 m a session in times that were acceptable for the exam (400 m/8 min), and had subsequently reverted over the years to being little more than a hobby swimmer. Of course, for anyone (particularly someone young) who can regularly swim distances like those, a distance of several hundred metres simply becomes a distance that can be crossed.

My parents did not allow me to swim across the Bay of Islands to the island that, thanks now to GoogleEarth, I know is only 400 m from the shore; not because they thought I might not make it, but because there were speed boats flitting about; in any case, I made it up the Waitangi River to the Haruru Falls from the jetty at the motorcamp, which was about 200 m. That would have been a trivial distance.

What happened in memory was that “trivial distance” changed its meaning over time, and that although the river is about 120 m wide at this point, it shrunk to about 10% of this value in the course of the years.

Something had to be done about swimming, and the question was, “How?” As we will soon see I had had a look around the uni sports’ internet pages and found plenty of stuff that was interesting, and at the beginning of April I went hunting for what they had on offer in the summer semester. A couple of pools to choose from, and a couple of weird regulations (such as some pools being on winter time until well into April, and the timetable looked correspondingly chaotic), but most of the stuff was either very early in the morning, or later in the evenings, which suited me better. Finally, after eliminating some days of the week, and the pools that I would have to travel across town to get to, I discovered a seventy-minute session for hobby swimmers – which I thought as an ex-lifesaver I might qualify for – at the Medical School’s pool, which was 15 minutes from home to pool, including changing togs.

The downsides were that this was a 17 m pool with a non-swimmers’ end; and that the starting time was 8:50 pm.

Nor did the first night start promisingly. Unfamiliar as I was with the pool at the hospital, I didn’t know (and hadn’t been informed) that you had to bring your own lock for the locker (later the instructor told me I could have dumped my rucksack at the side of the pool where it would have been safe), so I spent about 20 minutes unsuccessfully trying to find one at the supermarket, then decided I would borrow the lock from the cellar door for the evening. By the time I actually turned up ready to swim, there was not much time left. In any case I wasn’t going to be swimming more than 100 m or so that night.

Subsequent sessions began more punctually. At the second one I was given some advice for improving the kicking action of my breaststroke, which I diligently practised. Legs ached, calves cramped, but eventually (and on breaststroke alone), the breaks were shortened, the distances lengthened, and at the end of the semester I was swimming 1200 m a session again, after all those many years.

There was no question of continuing through the summer break, although with breaks for hiking, some cancellations, and the instructor’s holidays, the distance was set back every now and then. In total I now have almost 28 km under my bathers, which may be more than I’d ever swum before.

Then came the winter semester, and I must have been just a little lax in booking my place, because all the places had been taken, and only the waiting list was left. But then I also saw that the same instructor was offering an advanced group much earlier in the evening (6:30 pm), and there were places free in that, so I jumped for it. OK, so I wasn’t really advanced, and the instructor was not happy at my putting myself in the course, but, hey the time was much more suitable, and more than swimming up and down the length of the pool was not going to be on the program. The first evening was very much a big splash, with about a dozen very fast and furious swimmers doing their rounds. And then that was that. Perhaps they thought that a dozen fast swimmers in such a small pool was not a good idea at all, because in the few weeks after that, there were only two of us (another bloke whose breaststroke is on par with mine), with a couple of stay-alongs from the aqua fitness group, an occasional advanced swimmer, and the instructor himself getting into the pool for a couple of laps. Not much has changed since.

It’s an uphill battle to get the naïve confidence of 1974/75 to return, but the shoulders certainly have broadened. Sometimes being able to swim 100 m or to stay afloat for half an hour can make all the difference.