The answer is between 2pm and 3pm each Wednesday at the Newmarket Leisure Centre swimming pool.
My friend and I arrived as usual for our newly instituted Government-funded weekly free swim and were told that we were not eligible as this session wa
s reserved for those people aged 50 plus, so we would have to pay.
Taken aback by this logic, we explained that we had come each week since April 1 and that there had been no problem before. But to no avail. The new regime was cracking down.
We could swim free from noon to 2pm, when the workers on lunch break use it, and again after 3pm, when everybody including children use it, but not in between.
One supposed reason is that the pool is busy and the load needs to be spread somehow.
However, this session is among the quietest and safest of the week. Indeed, that’s why we go then. We counted only nine people using the pool in the 2pm to 3pm session and that included the two of us.
Sure enough, when we came out there were a good 20 customers in the queue waiting for the 3pm session to start.
Indeed, an old lady claimed to have been camping outside overnight for her freebie, as one might do for Wimbledon. I offered to insure her life against expiry before being served but, after some thought, she declined.
I can foresee the attendants as enforcers blowing whistles at 2pm and, Gestapo-like, herding the impecunious over-60s out of the pool to be confined in the changing rooms until 3pm while the wealthy 50 pluses float on.
Surely the Government did not intend this to happen. Or perhaps it did. Instead, my suggestion is that we oldies form a poolside knitting circle to while away the banned hour more productively. The more I consider it, the better this idea seems.
Some might think this situation is ludicrous, even laughable, and that the current management of this £14 million facility leaves a great deal to be desired. But I couldn’t possibly comment.
Graham Nield
Newmarket
