Carry on Learning

Here I am, nine years old, about to fail in learning to swim; a failure which has remained with me for the next 73 years, and one that I can at last recognise as a failure to learn to trust. This photograph was taken in the tidal swimming pool at Lynmouth, North Devon. Two years later Lynmouth was devastated by flooding. I remember my distress when the news finally reached us, realising for the first time how precarious the whole business of life could be.

 I had slight memories of War, of spending time in an air-raid shelter, but in a time before television I  knew only what I had been allowed to hear on radio, or via the illicit reading of a newspaper. I was protected from  knowing the realities. There was no personal involvement, but the destruction of a pretty village where I had spent a holiday was an awakening that changed my childhood. A river had done that. A river that I had walked along, paddled in, watched fish and fishermen beside. River water,  amplified into raging torrents by prolonged rainfall, had burst open stone cottages, torn bridges apart, flung great rocks and whole trees into houses and caused the deaths of more than 30 people, some of whom were never found. Yet this was a natural disaster, quite different from my limited experience of war, and totally unlike what we face today. More than enough to make me feel that I could never trust moving water again though.

My dislike of and failure to achieve any sort of competence in swimming remains, despite several intensive swimming courses and an amount of reassurance that I can actually swim. Perhaps I can, but if I can I can't breathe at the same time which puts me at a disadvantage, I suppose. My older grandchildren, now nine and five years old, are good or better than good swimmers, and now the two year-old can do it as well. I'd really like another try at swimming with a two year-old and I should make myself have another go. But I am not at all confident.

The learning that is so infinitely more important is learning to trust, not just water, but life itself. It seems so vital at these moments of  man-made turmoil, conflict and corruption that we can somehow hang on to a trust that the world is full of good and honourable people; that other drivers on the road will be careful, that people who say they will deliver your groceries will do so, that the vast unknown population is basically well-intentioned. Even more goodness comes from people who drive public transport, doctors who prescribe, surgeons who cut and remove bits, pilots and air crew who take you thousands of miles in a metal tube. You don't know them, yet you put your life into their hands You have to trust them. You have to trust the contents of boxes and bottles in the shops, that they contain what it says on the outside, even to the amount of calories (well, do you really?).  You have to trust the people who teach your children and grand-children, who feed your cat when you're away, who stop their vehicle at a road crossing when the signal tells them to. Then there people who are vital in your life, family, friends, neighbours, colleagues without whom life would be meaningless and empty. Too many people to number, all of then good, kind, caring and essential. We must never let the turmoil of an often regrettably reactive life devalue them or diminish their importance.

We are all enclosed in a great bubble of trust and goodness, and we need it as much as air itself.

Living and swimming are acts of trust.