Love In A Cold Swimming Pool

"Holy Mother of God!"

For an atheist, it's an unusual expression, but it exploded out of me involuntarily when the water at the leisure centre's pool hit my knees. We've heard stories about the Wednesday pool being cold before, but this was just insane. I clung to the railings by the steps, walking down a step.
"Yeeeeeee..."
I forced my way one step further, and the water hit my man-breasts.
"Gaaaaaaaarghhhh...."

You know the feeling when you know you have to do something, but just can't bring yourself to do it?
I couldn't let go of the rails.
I was still there when d made her way out of the changing room.
Eventually, I conquered the instincts that were screaming at me to get the hell out of this situation, and flopped into the water. My heart went mad, sending frantic memos to my brain, along the lines of:
"Did you not watch Titanic?"

When d came up to my side of the pool, she dipped her toes in.
"Brrr..." she said.
"Y-y-y-ya r-r-r-r-ecccccckon?" I shuddered.
She grinned. "Oh, it's not that bad, honey..."
But she didn't come in.
When, eventually, the Aquacise class started, d slid in from the side of the pool. Straight in, straight down.
"Fyyyyyyyyuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!"
Ricky, our instructor, looked down at us all, shivering and in at least one case, blue.
"Cold is it?" he asked. He has a gift for the obvious, does Ricky.
"Well listen," he said. "Anyone who doesn't think they can do this, who's too cold, you can go now. I'll mark you down as here."
"Gangway, pardon me, scuse me, comin' through," I said, wading through the ice-floes to the shallow-end.
d didn't move. It struck me later that this was because she was frozen stiff and terrified of making any waves to lap up her petrified skin.
But only later.
I stopped.

Never stop. It shows a lack of commitment to your course of action.
The music started, and before we knew what was happening, we were jogging and punching and buggering about. d though was still desperately trying to do an Aquacise class with minimum contact with the water. Her punching looked kinda like a chipmunk pushing away nuts. Her squat kind of didn't reach her knees. And suddenly we were laughing together, ignoring the tinge of blue and the goosebumps, having fun in spite of everything.

Mind you, she cleared out before the 'cool-down' period...which did precisely what it claimed to do, I should tell you. And so we got back into the rhythm of this whole 'group exercise' thing...

Then went out for dinner. It's Wednesday after all - almost a week to go before the next weigh-in, at which I intend to have bloody well lost something.