Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Super Blooper


We have a lovely lady, Deborah, working as a temp in our office at the moment, helping to rid us of our astronomically humungously huge backlog of work. She lives locally, and as it turns out, her little girl went to pre-school with the Moll. Small world and all that.

I had seen her in the swimming pool the night before she started work with us, and she mentioned that her husband (a previous non-swimmer) has swimming lessons on a Tuesday night. Every Wednesday she asks how my swim went the night before, and if I saw her husband warming up for his lesson: apparently he arrives some time before for a practice swim.

This has been going on for some weeks, and today she again asked me if I was swimming: to which I replied 'but of course'. 'Oh, you must look out for him, he'll be wearing his red shorts tonight'. Being the dutiful sort of girl that I am, I promised that I would.

I got to the pool in good time, swam a bit, and had a little look round. Bear in mind at this point that I had to be subtle about it: didn't want people to get the wrong impression, and I'm not wearing my wedding ring to swim any more: it's too big! Imagine being chatted up by a fat woman with a ridickerous ponytail in a public swimming pool!!

So, I established that there was in fact only one man in the pool wearing red shorts. Still I hesitated: it really isn't the done thing to chat to complete strangers in swimming pools, is it? I mean, it's just not British. Stiff upper lip, reserve and all that. I wrestled with my conscience: I mean, she did ask me to say 'hello': how very rude they would think me for ignoring him after the conversation that she and I had had earlier.

I wrestled with these thoughts for half an hour, then decided to be positive. He was, after all the only man wearing red shorts, swimming in the right pool, and at the allotted time. Had to be him right?

So, casual as I could muster, I asked 'so, are you Derek?'
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.'No', came the reply.

There really isn't anywhere to hide in a swimming pool, is there?

4 comments:

Chrissie said...

Snorting with laughter, and tears in my eyes.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...so very funny.

Seriously creased here...

Deborah Duck said...

Oh no! Oh, I'm blushing here for you, just the sort of thing I would have done.

Deborah Duck said...

And ... how's this for coincidence ... My name is Deborah and my DH is Derek, and I used to work as a temp for people with humungous backlogs of work!

Tina said...

Ooh, spooky!!

But can he swim??!!!