In Barton Springs On New Years Day

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: 

‘Do something everyday that scares you’. 

Dipping into Barton Springs on New Years’ Day when it’s 40 degrees outside and everyones wrapped up like  babies on their first day out in the cold. How’s about that, Elle? Although, all is not as it seems. I had visions of me plunging into ice cold water, turning red as a sunburnt lobster and being watched, only by crows on skeleton branches thinking: 

Mrs Roosevelt should have added:

‘But don’t die doing it’. 

Walking towards the entrance I could see people doing the breast stroke, diving from the spring board, having a chat with each other in the water like it was a sunny garden tea party on a summers afternoon! One elderly woman wearing a proper hat, another woman in a woolly bobble hat, like my wife’s english grannies tea cosy – I love those things: a jumper for a hot tea pot! – and the ubiquitous freestyler, who’s casually doing 25 lengths followed by a triple somersault before a ‘Raw Beet Breakfast at The Champion. Hold the sauce.

I’ve swum in the North Atlantic in every season, slipped into mountain lakes and shivered in rivers in the English autumn countryside but if it’s winter, it’s usually in the same manner as making a very weak cup of tea – one dunk-dip and your out. So either these hardy, hard assed swimmers where covered head to toe in goose fat or they were hardy, hard assed swimmers! I opened the gate with my towel wrapped around my trunks which looked like a giant swiss roll from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. This has and always will be my preferred way of taking my swimming togs to swim – nostalgia and practicality all rolled into one and don’t pardon that pun! In fact, rolling your swim stuff in this manner was the only way, back in the day.

 When we went to the local swimming pool in Glasgow, Scotland as kids throughout the summer holidays, this was the standard procedure on how to ‘roll yer towel ’n’ togs’; Fold the towel lengthways, clasp it between chin and chest, stretch your speedos, add, roll tightly and clamp it under your armpit by putting your hand in your jacket or trouser pocket. Leave your other hand free for: victory signs, pickin-n-flickin, dead legging and throwing stones, etc.

We where all mad into Martial Arts at the time due to ‘Bruce Lee: Enter The Dragon’. Other TV show’s that where on at the time included ‘The Water Margin’ – cool’ and ‘Monkey’ – mad as f**k!’. But out of all the kung fu heroes on TV at the time, I wanted to be Caine (David Carradine) in Kung Fu.

We would all gather at the bottom of the drive take the cord that ran around the inner waist of our jackets, tie our rolled towels at both ends, swing it over our shoulders and before we all set off through the housing schemes, inevitably getting chased by brick-n-bottle throwing gangs, wonky legged one eyed dogs and one another, we would all stand in single file and slowly walk up the drive whistling the theme tune to Kung Fu – pure magic.

Money was tighter than Big Sinky’s Speedos, so for my Ma to gather up the pennies for me to go swimming was no small task but somehow, seeing the tears well up in my eyes, she would scrape together just enough for the admission, which gave me the nickname of Freddie Fast Fare – did I care? Did I F**k, cos all I could think about was getting into that Swimming Pool and pretend I was The Man From Atlantis. 

I made my own set of Kung Fu Sticks one time – our Son calls them Lung Chucks – with an old mop pole, two bent nails and a rusty chain. Sorry for my language here but these things where fuckin’ lethal! I used to practice in ‘the big room’ – Swish!-Swish!-Swash!-Shwack! (a cross between a smack/hit and a whack) right in the forehead. Swish!-Swosh!(a downward swoosh)-Swoosh!-Whack! (an upward swoosh) Right in the spine! Then everything would come together and flow like wind and water and the sticks would swoop and curve like swallows in slow motion, eyes wide, mouth in the O shape, carving up the air like a master Samurai, then the door opens, and my big brother shouts ‘Hey! Bruce! Yer teas oot and yer pies in the oven!” Just as I’m passing right hand stick to left hand stick through my legs and I miss and the stick connects to my nuts and I fall to the floor, with a face like a baby doing its first real poop, with noises to match. My Ma sees the tears and bruises on my arms and say’s: 

“Have you been hanging out with those Manson’s again?!”

“No Ma!”                                                                                   

“Have you been gang fighting with The Tay again!”                 

“No Ma!”

“Are you lying to me again?!”                                                   

“Ma! No!” 

“Get to your room! There’ll be no tea for you tonight! And come Sunday at Mass you can do an extra two Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and an  Act Of Contrition!!!” 

If only she knew.

Where was I? 

Oh yeah, The Plunge. 

“Come on Daddy!” 

Shouted my son, my wife and my mother-in-law, looking like pop-up carol singers on an Oxfam Christmas card,

 “It’s getting a bit chilly out here!” 

Me? Standing on the edge of the pool in nothing but my trunks shaking with the cold, looking a bit hesitant, to say the least, didn’t help. Now that I know the fact that the temperature of the natural spring pool is a tepid 64 all year round was unknown to me as I stood there like a trembling milky ice pop in two minds – one mind had me in the warm car rushing towards home and a log fire, the other mind had me being carried out of the pool like a giant ice cube, thawing back home by the same log fire wrapped in a man-sized tea cosy. I jumped out of my trance by the loving, encouraging word – dressed up as a jagged bark – coming from my supportive wife, 

“JUMP!” 

Then I embraced myself. At this point I would like to say that I thought I looked like a brave cossack mountain man, arms folded with a relaxed wry smile or a bull bison snorting clouds of steam before the charge, but I looked more like a shocked baby having its first bath – with sound effects – then I jumped. As I surfaced with the face of a buddhist monk entering samadhi (shocked baby looking for a flannel) my family looked at me and my facial expression of; 

“Fuckinell!” 

Then asked: 

“How is it?” 

I replied: 

“Cool!” 

Then quickly added: 

“It’s warm in here!” with great genuine surprise. 

It was. I asked them could they see the steam rising from the water, they shivered: 

“No”, 

Which I get now, as you have to be eye level with the surface and pretend for a few moments you’re a giant hippo, eyes above the water, nose below,  all that was missing was a warm cool wooly hat.

I gleefully continued:

“Aw! Man! This is a lukewarm bath!’ and resisted the urge to shout: 

“Come on in! The waters lovely!” 

As I swam towards the diving board, wishing I’d brought my giant panda bears head, I could see the cardboard carol singers shuffling towards the exit gate with scarfs wrapped tightly below their nose’s. I passed a bobbing duck which looked  quite shocked to see me as if I was a wasted beluga whale hungry for a feathery snack, then I quickly realised it was a petrified decoy. On the  diving board the chill factor froze me to the bone so I knew I had to make this quick and get back into that giant toasty bath. Again, the encouraging chant of:

“DIVE!” Came from my shivering family who by now where making those moves a boxer make’s to loosen up before a fight. I ran in slow motion, took three giant running steps to compensate for the spring back, and dived in like a cement manikin. I surfaced with that gleeful smile again, swam to the other side and was wrapped in a welcome towel, like a robe. The fighter/dipper has left the ring/pool.

(The Champ has left the ring or more to the point; the pale dipper has left the pool. The adrenalin kicked in on the way home like a buoyant wave, lifting me up to my euphoric plain, like a slow release happy drug, like an ecstatic poem. I was elevated. I suddenly made a pact with myself to become a  ‘Wild Swimmer’, to seek out dark night pools, silver moonlight rivers, black seas. But for now? Log fires and warm Brandy please. 

Austinites have many things to be proud of in their city and for me, Barton Springs is up there at the top. It’s timeless, it’s got an amazing setting and as of writing this, I still haven’t swum there at night, under floodlight and moon, overlooking the city, rising out from a cradle of dark green. I now consider myself an honorary member of The Austin Polar Bear Club and proud of it.