I Inflate My Pyjamas

Disclaimer:

The first thing to say is that I got it wrong. Now that I'm back on-grid, I've been able search inflating pyjamas for life-saving. I came across this video from the US Navy which I strongly recommend you watch rather than following any of what follows (if at any point you think I must try this at home.)

I Inflate My Pyjamas

But you too may be of an age to have inflated your pyjama bottoms while engaged in Bronze / Silver / Gold awards in school swimming lessons. 

I walked with my schoolfriends to the Swiss Cottage baths. This memory came up for me while holidaying with my Longest-Serving Friend in North Wales. 

Did you wrestle with your pyjamas while treading water and fifty years later wonder why, if it was even possible? My Longest-Serving Friend said she did.

We were eco camping to stave off the world for a while, so standards plummeted, and Tuesday was sticky with heat, risotto, sun cream, and fly repellent.

We made a plan, took our pyjamas to change into after swimming. Here's the lake - the water a warm-cool blue: more France than Snowdonia.

We walked in without gasping, swam about, cooled off. The paddle boarders were few and distant. The mountains looked on, thirstily. 

Dressing pragmatically (straight into pyjamas) we talked about swimming and long-ago pyjamas: fly-sewn-up, patched at the knee, handed down from brothers. 

We returned to the lake and working from memory, I submerged my pyjamas, then tied a knot at the end of each leg. I blew in through the waist.

My Longest-Serving Friend took on the drowning. She splashed about, trod water, swam what would've been lengths, said, help. 

I knotted and blew. We laughed and I blew. I tied  more knots. She said, I'd be dead by now. We giggled; but it's no laughing matter, drowning.

They were right to teach us to aid each others' survival. Two to a cubicle, we learned to wriggle out of wet costumes. We sat together through Maths in damp cardigans.

I tried to remember. My pyjamas inflated for seconds, a tartan balloon, before sinking. There's no way I'd have saved myself with these half-memories.  

That day was perfect - the lake calm and warm. It was total immersion, a cleansing joy. We swam about, came out pure and new, soothed and happy. 

We came out saved, buoyant.