Return (when do I ever leave it!) to one of my favourite subjects, the swimming pool.  Although I go to swim every day, I do not go at exactly the same time, so I see a variety of people of all ages who accompany me on my swims.  This does not make me more accommodating!  The perfect pool for me is an empty one with only one swimmer - myself!  This rarely happens, but usually I am lucky and am able to get a lane to myself.  Usually, but not always!  As an only child 'sharing' as a concept has not been something close to my heart, and certainly not when swimming.
          Most of my fellow swimmers are fine and any confusion is, I am sure, more due to my not fully understanding the language than anything else.  Some people, however, are simply plain rude and/or selfish.
          If I have to share a lane, I do so with good grace - as long as my fellow swimmers are equally considerate.  Diagonal backstroke in a confined space is not what Robert Frost had in mind when he wrote about 'good neighbours'!
          I usually outlast my fellow swimmers and so I recognise that any sharing will be temporary and  something which can be tolerated and is obviously character building.
          Some things do rankle and the simmering feelings contained in the following poem have been building up to their fitting expression!
          I am conscious that this a a relatively long poem on a relatively unimportant, even trivial, event - but it obviously meant something to me.  I hope my readers will be able to relate too.

Petty

First length is for warm up;

then crawl ‘work out’ starts,

and finishes after a metric mile,

with two slow end-to-ends of breast.

Yesterday, I looked around and saw

there were no vacant lanes for me

to swim.  I chose, therefore, to take

the free and common space

for those who splash.

As I approached the end of my

first length where, nowadays,

I stretch and set my watch,

a woman of a certain age,

cosmetics waterproof and nails

a crimson red, swam past

into my length’s end and

indicated I should move away

to the far side so she could

swim alone (next to the floats)

and ‘properly’.

Instinctive chivalry dictated

I accept her terms. 

                        But as

I moved I realized that she

assumed that I was one of those

slow men who clutter up the pool

with painful strokes and little pace.

I moved and took my place

along a side cluttered with

exit steps and started my

true swim. 

                        I was the better,

without doubt, quicker and

more purposeful and I soon

lapped her plodding speed.

I hope she spoke no English

as, I understand, expletives voiced

in water carry far!  And voice I did

each time I passed her form!

My tricked gentility gave sharp

intent to arbitrary length and

fifteen hundred metres soon

passed by – while she moved to a empty

lane as soon as possibly she could –

and I resumed my place where

I had started out

                        – and she left

long before I did.

Is this a poem or a peevish rant?

And does it matter if it says

something significant to me?

Our lives from day to day

are not defined by shattering events;

rather by how the busses run

and whether there is time for tea.

I am surprised by just how

ritualized my daily swim’s become

and how disturbed I am

by what I take to be

divergence from the norm

(defined by me) and, perhaps,

I need to pause a space,

and think about my passion for

an exercise contained

and destination-less

as swimming is.

One day I will count up the number of poems I have written about swimming and perhaps start worrying about my focus of my poetic attention.  Meanwhile I will continue to write about those aspects of life which I find interesting and worry about the depth that I go into certain aspects of my life later!