So dragged myself off to the pool this afternoon... no doubt about it, Lake Bled's nicer but then so was the company. Actually learned to swim in 2000, but lost the urge and the confidence, so it's starting all over again. FLoH did wonders on the latter score when we spent time in the water in Slovenia, and I've been niggling for ages that there's six year old kids that dare do stuff in the water that I daren't. I envy the water babies, know there's no actual reason I can't do that stuff and as I've time on my hands, I'm back to having another go at it. Problem was, my puff wasn't all that it should be all day today, and I actually felt quite weak in the water, lungs weren't behaving at all. Think it's time I went to the quacks and got this looked at, walked a mile and a half earlier and was quite seriously out of breath; this kicked off for the first time in 2004 - I'm HOPING it's a mild allergy to my cat, or a reaction to the dirty air where I work. The worst case scenario would be heart or lungs, in which case I may be truly screwed. I was considering what the hell I'd do if that were the case and I was forced to give up my job. Suprisingly, I managed to come up with some fairly positive "what if" scenario's quite quickly involving selling the house, paying off the debts, getting into a rental in the countryside somewhere and repositioning life while I sort my health out - reading, gardening, going back into education, moving eventually into a new career.

Speaking of careers, an interesting morning was had... further from Friday's encounter, today it was MY turn to be sat in the middle of town on the busiest shopping day of the week in plain wrappers, except that it's not so plain. Eight hours at the wheel of an intercept car waiting for a call to go that never came... how obvious CAN three big blokes further bulked up by body armour under their coats actually look? The answer to that one I fear is very, judging from the looks we got stopping off for grub on the way back. Also, the plain coat I keep for such occaisions is great for the night where we normally work, but not so good in the middle of town in daylight... Dutch army DPM gortex parka, after a night time experience where I discovered that the issue coat is absolute pants for moving with ANY kind of stealth whatsoever. Never mind eh. The thing to remember when having a day tossing about like that is to remember that it could be worse, they could be making you work, the bad guys could actually come which would inconvenience everything and you're actually getting paid for eight hours chuckles with a couple of good blokes.