My sister Kelly was due to take part in the Great London swim on Saturday 30th August to raise money for the St Marks Hospital foundation. She was travelling down to stay at mine on the Friday when she received an email to say that it had been cancelled.
When she rang to tell me I was shocked but I could hear in her voice that she was totally gutted. She was fighting back tears. Earlier in the day she had been elated when her fundraising went over the £1000 mark and now she was being told the swim was cancelled and all the training had been for nothing.
But Kelly is stubborn and doesn't give up easily (something that often drives me mad but in this case was a good thing!). She got onto Twitter and amongst the grumbling and complaining there was talk by other swimmers of completing the swim somewhere else. There were plenty of other people in the same boat as Kelly; they'd raised sponsorship money for charities and now had no event to participate in.
So we trawled the internet looking for suitable, local outdoor open water swimming locations as she had decided that doing it at the local leisure centre just wouldn't do! Eventually we decided that we would travel into London as planned but that she would swim in the Sepentine at Hyde park. They have a lido area sectioned off from the rowing boats and pedallos and although it wasn't tidal it would still be bloody freezing and a challenging swim.
The one thing that Kelly was really upset about was not getting a medal so on the Saturday morning me and Dad popped out to the shops. Luckily I have a trophy shop 2 minutes down the road from me so I was able to get a medal, which I hid in my handbag until she did the swim later that day.
Before we set off we had some pictures taken of us in our St Marks tshirts. I had bought a pair of white crocs to wear aswell as a joke. Kelly always wears her white crocs to the swimming pool and I hate them. I even told her once that "crocs are for children and theatre nurses only"! The irony was that she hadn't brought hers with her as she knew I hated them. But she saw the funny side of me in them (and no, I won't be wearing them again, they're uncomfortable and hideous)
The crocs
Sisters
With our Daddy (how proud does he look???)
So we all got into the car and headed I to London. We drove because it was cheaper to all go in the 7 seater and pay London parking prices (which happened to be £25.30 for the day!) rather than go on the train/tube and everyone pay for that. Plus it limited the amount of walking I had to do.
On the drive in we were like tourists...hanging our heads out the windows when we saw something famous or interesting. It was better than one of those open top bus tours! Eventually we parked up and headed for Hyde park and for the Sepentine.
We were surprised that in order to acess the lido as a spectator you had to pay the full entry price, but there was no way we were going to miss watching her do her swim so in we all went.
Now Kelly is not one to do things by halves- she had even had a special swimming costume made for the occasion.
The St Marks swimming costume
The kids had made a banner and we all cheered as she got into the rather dirty looking water.
The kids banner
The kids holding the banner (I've purposefully cropped their heads off so that they remain anonymous)
Getting in
She needed to swim 16 lengths as the lido was 100m in length. We shouted out the number every time she got up the end so she didn't have to keep count herself. But we didn't tell her about the dead fish we had seen floating in the water. She was struggling enough with the ducks and swans flying into the water and swimming up next to her and I think that the dead fish would have been the icing on the cake and she would have gotten out. To be fair it was pretty big!
The dead fish
While she was swimming Hubby wandered over to the water intending to have a little paddle and see how cold the water was. What he didn't realise was that there was green algae growing all around the edge and it was slippery. I'm sure you can guess what happened next...yes, he slipped and ended up I'm the water!
Whoops!
Totally soaked
We all had a laugh at his expense. But we were going to pizza express for dinner and obviously couldn't take him dripping. Luckily he had considered going for a proper swim so he had some swim shorts in his bag and he had taken his trainers off before dipping his toe in.
Kelly was in the zone and didn't notice what had been going on at the side of the lido. She completed the swim in 1 hour 3 minutes. We were all really proud of her but she wanted to do in less than an hour so she felt a bit disappointed (quite unnecessarily in our opinion).
Finished!
The kids were really excited to present her with her medal and I think she must have liked it as she wore it all day!
One very happy but tired swimmer with her medal
After Kelly had got changed we went to Pizza Express as planned and had a lovely meal. Then we took Dad to Harrods as he had never been before. The kids had their scooters with them and you weren't allowed to take them in. You could leave them in their luggage/cloakroom place but it would cost £10 each!! Sod that! So Hubby volunteered to stay outside with the offending scooters while we went in for a wander.
I hadn't been to Harrods for years and strolling through it brought back memories of when I went with a friend around 12 years ago and we went to the pub. Yes, Harrods has a pub inside. I think it has everything in there! The kids loved the toy department and I'm sure they could have stayed there for hours. They were fascinated by the Steif teddies and gigantic safari animals.
Kelly with the £4000 horse. I'm sure you could get a real one for that money!
By now I was completely exhausted. My leg was getting more numb by the minute, my back was killing me and my pouch was spasming like crazy. I was so pleased to get back to the car and within minutes of the engine starting I was sleeping like a baby.
To be honest I couldn't believe I had lasted the day. The last time I went into London in July I needed to be in a wheelchair so this shows the progress I'm making. It's slow progress but at least I'm finally moving in the right direction.
When we found out the swim had been cancelled it had the potential to ruin the day but it didn't and we actually all really enjoyed ourselves. I was so proud of Kelly. This time last year she could barely swim a width in the pool and yet now she had just swam a mile in the Serpentine. And she had done it to raise money for a charity very close to our hearts (or should that be our bowels?!)
Standing by the side of the water I felt a twinge of sadness, maybe even a bit of jealousy that Kelly was able to do a swim that I wanted to do. But I pushed those feelings aside as it was Kelly's day and actually I had a lot to be thankful for. I am at home. I have been out of hospital now for 6 weeks which is the longest stretch I've had at home in 18 months. I was surrounded by my family and over £1000 has been raised for St Marks. 😊
NB x
P.S. Sorry about the lack of blogging recently. The kids have gone back to school so hubby and I are trying to establish a routine with them as in the last year they haven't really had one. So that means I'm up early to help get them ready for school and then I've 2-3 hours with them after school on my own before hubby gets back from work. I'm enjoying every minute I have with them and trying to soak it all up and savour it all. But it leaves me completely wiped out so I tend to go to bed at the same as the kids. And then it's the morning again and the whole routine begins again. I've got a couple of posts that I've started but had the time or the energ to complete. I'm going to try and finish off and upload some time this week so watch this space.
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