Swimming lessons can drive parents to tears

2:16pm Monday 17th March 2008

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THE long-awaited re-opening of the leisure centre meant only one thing - swimming lessons were back on.

Admirable though they are lessons can, I believe, fill the most capable of parents with dread.

If the rush to get there from school dragging tired children doesn't induce tears (mine), then the realisation that you have left the required swimming costume on the radiator at home will surely finish you off.

But before the lessons began our children had to be reassessed to see if they had forgotten everything that they once knew or had somehow turned into Sharron Davies in the last eight months.

Parents took their places in the café watching anxiously as the children were put through their strokes.

Once assessed we had to join a long queue to pick a day for lessons and pay.

It was at this point that I noticed several women actually had steam coming out of their ears. They had reached harassment overload.

One woman in the queue next to me was heard to mutter "I wish it would flood again."

But for all the moans and groans of the adults around her, my daughter was delighted to be back in the water.

And my son, who refuses to take part in lessons because he doesn't like "being bossed around", was just happy to be back at the leisure centre because of the doughnuts.

Away from the pool, a trip to the Oxford Natural History Museum to enjoy a science fair was a big success.

Science was presented to the children in the best way possible - via their stomachs - with ice cream magically appearing with the addition of liquid nitrogen to cream.

And Alka Seltzer was put to good use with oil and water as a home-made lava lamp.

The kitchen cupboards and medicine cabinet at home will now be pressed into scientific use. Does anyone know how I can get my hands on liquid nitrogen?