Pivo here.. explaining to you what waiting for his channel relay has done to him!
Note: as I publish this.. he is on the boat about to start his relay… Go cosmic rays!!!
Well hello there, it is Pivo here, now I actually have a proper name, but well the mermaids choose not to use this, I may reveal my real name at the end of this post.
My blog post today is actually not about swimming, its about waiting …….. waiting…….. and waiting some more. I was meant to be doing a 4 person 2 way channel relay to France and back. Myself, Brian (reserve), Lisa and Hilary, and doctor, Parviz were all scheduled to swim for the charity COSMIC, the Children of St Marys Intensive Care Unit, a great charity and a great cause. We are lucky enough to have one of the children treated in the hospital by Parviz, who lost parts of 3 limbs coming with us to blog and tweet the journey.
Our tidal window was for a week from 9-16 August. Now that is not a typo, that’s right we have been waiting 5 1/2 weeks now to do our swim. We were unable to go in our available week, so we essentially went on a waiting list, and we would be going once swims for a particular week went. Unfortunately the weather in this fair fine country of yours, to put it bluntly has been s**t since 9th August. There were long periods where no boats were going out at all. As each week passed, more and more swimmers became backed up.
To say this has been frustrating, is well a huge understatement, it is never nice being in limbo. While we have been waiting, we have had to put other things in life on hold. We have been able to make plans, but then not too complex plans, and when making these plans knowing that these could be thrown out the window if we got the call to go swimming. Except we have not had the call. The Coniston swim Manda blogged about recently I completed too, but it was touch and go till the Thursday before the weekend that we were sure we could go to the Lakes and would not be in the channel.
Some of us made concrete plans, 5 weeks after the scheduled date of the swim, not thinking there would have been any chance not to have completed the swim. Hilary made plans to go on a family holiday to South East Asia. Hilary is now there, and she is unable to swim with us. I feel absolutely gutted that Hilary cannot be there if we do go, the amount of effort she has put in. I am due to meet up with her in a few weeks in Vietnam, who knows if we will have done the swim when I do. Brian our reserve swimmer, who is mentioned in this blog often, is also possibly unable to swim if we do go this weekend, he has family over and cannot get out of the plans he has made.
I can f***ing tell you as well what this waiting has done, it has made us all irritible as well, angry at little things, and friends and family. I don’t know how many times I have been asked the following: how was the swim? have you done it yet? when are you going? whats going on? has the weather been that bad? have other boats gone out? why haven’t you? will you go this year? at all? how is the training? how is the motivation? – ENOUGH ALREADY, I don’t know the answers to all these questions, only that I hope we will be going soon. Humph
It really has been exhausting, we keep swimming because we know we may be going soon, but don’t know when. That word again soon! Hmmm I am beginning to dislike it. It has been a long summer swim season. Motivation is waning
We have become pseudo experts on the weather, and looking at wind and swell conditions. If it is fine in London, is it fine in Dover, or in the middle of the channel. All I know is that weather presenters – well they still don’t know s*t. The weather is always ever changing, and that sucks!
The numbers of emails, phone calls, texts, whatsapp messages, smoke signal and psychic messaging we have been doing and all exchanged over this period has been ridiculous. Whenever I see a message, email about the swim, I can’t help but roll my eyes and take a deep breath sometimes. Social media is not so fun either. People know we are about to swim, or have swum, the support is all good but at the end of the day all of us are sounding like broken records with the same lines on why we have not gone being trotted out.
So waiting is not fun at all, I suppose we can compare this waiting to waiting for Christmas or your birthday, but then they keep changing the dates, or saying we can’t do it now, we will do it soon though! Enough already, really. I hate waiting, I just want to go.
waiting …………….. waiting…………. waiting
And then suddenly, well today as I was writing this blog entry, we were told we had an amber warning, we could be going on Friday, but then wait ….. good news this time, it seems we are all systems go for Friday morning at 7am. Hallelujah, the waiting maybe over real soon. I can wait now a few more days, and know that soon I will be in the middle of the English channel, swimming to France and back.
I can tell you, the wait although hard, frustrating, and a pain in the arse, well it has been worth it.
Wish us luck. We wait no more …….. well hopefully. If we swim I may be back for another tale to be told.
Paul aka pt, aka Pivo
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