Swimming Kit List: Towel, Goggles, Pyjamas

There were three candidates. The Christmas pair from his grandmother. The pair Fergus sleeps in, which have a hole I will not explain to a swimming teacher. And the dinosaur pair. The dinosaur pair has been worn by all three of my children and has outlived two hamsters.

Susan Chapman, looking back on her own education in 2025, remembers her junior school class “swimming in pyjamas and diving for rubber bricks”, and the stronger swimmers being paired with the less confident. I remember school swimming chiefly as a verruca sock.

A young teacher with Puddle Ducks, the swimming company her mother co-founded, has written about the Pyjama Weeks of her childhood, including one in which a fellow teacher, walking past her mum, pushed her mum into the pool. “We had to rescue her and everyone found that hilarious!”

I bought a new pair for the purpose, £8. Fergus packed the dinosaurs anyway. On the day I volunteered to walk the class to the pool, which is how I came to be at the edge in my good coat when he asked if I wanted to see the rope throw.

He threw the rope. I caught it. He pulled. He is stronger than he looks.

Nine seven-year-olds in pyjamas pulled me out, and everyone found it hilarious. I was the only person at the pool not in the kit on the list.