Great thing about self-employment (and there are down-sides) is that you can take a few hours off on a sunny, warm day like today and go swimming with the family. Of course, the water is so unbelieveably cold (at least where we go - White Rock, Dalkey, Co. Dublin) that your body is numb for the entire time you're in the water (or for all the time after the shocking pain dies down).
Still, it's refreshing, I suppose.
However, if there's one thing I hate about swimming here, it's the fact that so many middle aged men feel they can swim naked at a public beach. I probably wouldn't care if I weren't bringing my young daughters with me, but it really burns me up. Only a few hundred yards away (towards Dalkey) is a "men's swimming area". Why don't they go there instead? They know families will be coming to White Rock.
I can tolerate the flies (barely), the dogs (doesn't anyone else feel that it's totally unhygenic to bring a dog onto a beach?), the garbage and all the rest, but I can't stand the selfishness (and, I can't help thinking, the exhibitionism) that these guys "display".
