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The kids were not keen to go to their skiing lesson today and there were tears at breakfast as we tried to work out whether it was better to make them see this through or to let them do what they wanted on holiday. Parenting is hard. Obviously we have to teach them that sometimes it's tough to learn something and that you can't just give in, but equally we don't want them to remember us as tyrants who forced them to do what we wanted. The wrong move could put them off skiiing for life. Which obviously I was gunning for.
The only lessons we could get at late notice were at midday until two, which really takes the middle chunk out of the day and makes it hard to do anything else. After insisting that they do the lessons, we changed our minds and said they didn't have to do it. It was the right choice I think. We went for lunch and then walked to the other side of town where there was an impressive municipal swimming pool.
In typical Herring fashion we followed the map on our phone and ended up trudging through deep snow and ending up behind the building with a ski slope between us and the door, but eventually we got there.
There were lots of signs in the foyer saying that you couldn't wear shorts style trunks in the pool. And we were informed that if Ernie and I wanted to swim we'd have to buy some speedos from a machine. I didn't really understand what this was about. I could only think that either French people are perverts and like to see the outline of all men's genitals in the pool or that the French assume everyone else is a pervert and want them to wear tight pants so that if they become erect in the pool everyone will know and they can be sent to prison. Alternatively this was just a way to make an extra 30 euros off of foreigners who wouldn't know about this rule,
Having now looked it up I find that it's about hygiene. The French are worried that men might wear shorts all day long and thus have trunks covered in dust and smegma, and assume (wrongly from my experience of foreign beaches) that men would not wear budgie smugglers all day. It seems a bit crazy, especially in a ski resort where absolutely nobody would be wearing swimming trunks all day, unless they were insane. But I had no choice and bought the trunks.
The pool experience, aside from all the crushed trouser snakes staring me in the face at every turn, was really fun. There were a few different pools, but all for playing/relaxing rather than swimming. One that spun in a circle, a kids one, a bigger one with jacuzzis and other bits and bobs, one that was really cold, one next to it that was warm and had exercise bikes in it, a steam room and sauna and an outside pool surrounded by snow.
It was a strange experience to go outside in a warm pool with cold snow falling on you. Ernie was reticent to begin with, but Phoebe liked it. Some utter nut cases were getting out of the pool, smearing snow on themselves and then jumping back in, or even lying in the snow. Why would you do that? I certainly had no interest.
But Phoebe was keen to give it a go and that made Ernie want to do it and Catie joined in. They then all insisted I do it too. And because I would do anything for my kids and didn't want to look like the curmudgeon that I am, I jumped out and smeared myself in snow. It was kind of fun and then more fun to get back in the warm pool. We then had a snowball fight and got more adventurous. I don't know how hygienic any of this was. Men in speedos had been rubbing against this snow and then jumping back in the pool. But never mind. It was going to be a great memory and thankfully one that we couldn't take photos of, so we could forget about the horrible too small lycra trunks on all the men. And the trunks inside the trunks. At least it was cold.
The kids loved it and didn't want to leave and it was good to have done something different that didn't involve skiiing. So missing the lesson (that we'd still paid for of course) was the right choice. And now I have a pair of Speedos that I will never wear again, unless I am in France.
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