In an uncharacteristic fit of altruism the other day, I offered to help save
the club money by acting as lifeguard. I was smugly sure that my smartly
polished Royal Life Saving Society Bronze Medal would dazzle the Pool
manager in to agreeing. Imagine my humiliation when she turned it over and
notified me that it had expired a year ago. The RLSS insists you re-qualify
regularly to make sure you can still do it, and to keep their publishers in
profit by changing the syllabus each time. I should know, because I have
re-qualified irregularly since I was about 13 -  so long ago that Manchester
was still a boy Oldham was just a piglet. As I slunk out of the manager's
office with the prospect of having to re-qualify I wondered yet again
whether it was worth the pain.

I first learned life saving with a class of police trainees. My dad was a
copper so somehow I, as a 13 year old, was slung in the pool (literally)
with 40 blokes whose main selection criteria were that they were over 9 feet
tall, weighed at least 30 stone and had very sharp elbows (and an even
sharper sense of humour). Needless to say it was hard going, but at least I
was popular. The smallest people in any lifesaving class are always in great
demand as 'the casualty', because they are easier to tow and lift. A few
years on I found that people's smallness often coincided with their being
female, and after the introduction of The Kiss of Life to the
syllabus ...but I digress ( I digressed a lot as a teenager).  However, in
those early days there was The Holger-Nielson Method. This may sound like a
form of birth control - and actually looked a bit like the mating of
hippopotami - but in fact was supposed to be a means of resuscitation. You
laid the victim on their front, and kneeled over them, bum-to-bum as it
were, and then pressed down on their back. It rarely worked because most
people simply sat on their 'body' and pressed out all the air until the
victim banged the floor in submission.

Its successor, The Bilateral Method, was not much better. This consisted of
laying the body on their front (again), but this time attacking it from the
top end with a sort of wrestling hold on the elbows, heaving the arms over
the head. This was meant to draw air in to the lungs somehow, but was
usually so painful for the subject that a fight would ensue and it ended up
as a first aid lesson as well. We all know about The Kiss of Life, so as my
wife might read this I'll not elaborate, except to say that the RLSS are a
bunch of spoil sports. No sooner did they invent a real incentive to go on
their courses, than they ruined it all by introducing androgynous plastic
dummies to practice on. I believe that using these at an impressionable age
has left a deep folk-memory on people of a certain age - how else can you
explain Dale Winton's popularity?

There were no dummies to spoil the lessons in Restraint however. This is the
noble art of stopping the other person from drowning their rescuer, and is
not a lot different from Kung Fu under water. Practice usually involves the
'body' grabbing anything in sight and the hapless lifesaver trying to break
their grip and gain control. I lost sight of this goal (as well as
everything else in the pool) once when a particularly enthusiastic and
bosomy young lady locked her arms round my head. Far from trying to break
her hold I simply thought 'what a way to go!', and failed my exam. Soon
after that I was compulsorily paired with my wife, who had not accepted my
plea of provocation for my earlier misdemeanours . Having my wife as 'The
Body' had the compensation that she is a lot smaller than I (most people
are - sideways at least), and so easier to tow. When it was her turn though,
I had to help in unseen ways or it would be semolina for a week. She had no
problems in breaking my holds either, as she had no hesitation in pulling
the emergency cord; .'nuff said!

None of these tortures approaches The Incident for fun though. This is the
bit where the trainer concocts an accident involving water for you to sort
out. In their frenzy to come up with varied and testing problems they rival
Brookside in plumbing the depths of unlikely and weird scenarios. I recall
once I had to imagine I was on a river bank (the pool) and a mother and baby
fell in the water, capsizing a dinghy with an elderly couple in it. You are
always supposed to enlist the support of bystanders if possible, so I tried.
The first claimed not to know how to use a telephone to call an ambulance
and the second kept saying 'I'm a cheese sandwich'. The baby (a doll, thank
God!) sank and had to be dived for, then as I approached the woman she had a
'fit' and kicked me in the matrimonial department. The elderly man was
dragged to the bank by his wife who then had a 'heart attack'. My saying,
'Oh do come off it!' did not impress the examiner who insisted that I
continue to try to cope, while all around impersonated Corporal Jones from
Dad's Army, by running in circles shouting 'Don't Panic! Don't Panic!',
whilst doing exactly that.

When it happens for real it can be even more tricky. The only time I have
had to use my lifesaving in anger so far, was when a friend of mine
collapsed in heaving seas after 13 hours of trying to become the first
person to swim the Channel backstroke (I kid you not). Kevin is Jumbo
Economy Size like me, and was covered from head to foot in lanolin grease.
The struggle which ensued was rather like a cartoon of Donald Duck in the
bath trying to grip the soap, except that, in my case, instead of the
squeeze firing the soap against the ceiling, Kevin was propelled downwards.
Fortunately this made him so angry that the adrenaline rush gave him enough
energy to surface and chase me about until the boat could circle round and
pick us both up.

So will I sign up to re-qualify? I expect so - it's become a bit of  a habit
now. So should you. As well as all the worthy reasons why every swimmer
should learn life saving, it can be a lot of fun. Where else can you ask a
member of the opposite sex if you can borrow their body for a while and not
get your face slapped if you are a man, or followed home by a crowd of
hopefuls if you are a woman? Hang on though! I've just remembered that my
daughter met her husband Life Saving, so delete that last bit.