Not A Good Way To Teach Swimming!

A Memory of Gosport.

As a pupil at Gosport High School, I had to attend swimming lessons first thing in the morning each week in the open-air, unheated pool at Gosport, in the school term following Easter. It was (literally) freezing cold and a horrible experience!
On the first day, never having been in or even having seen a swimming pool before, I was pushed in to the deep end and clearly remember my panic as I struggled to the side and somehow got out - no-one came to my assistance, or even noticed.
No real attempt was made to teach us to swim and we just prayed to survive to the end of the session, when we had somehow to dry our frozen bodies and get dressed in a tiny cubicle - my hands had no feeling - they were blue with pink spots.
I hated every minute of the school's poorly-supervised, sadistic and clearly stupid approach to teaching children to swim, resulting - for me and many others of my generation - in a lifelong aversion to water, swimming and the smell of chlorine. After the first couple of sessions, I found every excuse to avoid going near the place. A shame, because it could all have been so different if the school had done the job properly, but this was typical of their approach to any kind of sporting activity in those days - no idea at all!