MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Don't know what it's like elsewhere, but in Edinburgh and it's surrounding area there are only 2 pools with diving boards (until the commy pool opens again). When I was growing up (in the midlands) there seemed to be a lot more pools with boards - which is a shame as I used to spend a fair bit of time mucking about on them as a lad.
But here's the main point of the rant - one of the pools in Edinburgh lets you do whatever you want, and is populated with kids of all ages flinging themselves about doing jumps / summersaults / backflips - the lot, which is fantastic. The other one, and the commy pool when it opens I suspect, only allows diving - no flips etc and not even jumping in of any kind.
Why? Probably health and safety, but kids are being stopped from having a whole pile of healthy challenging fun, and how do you progress to diving if you can't start by jumping in? Probably by enrolling in 2 years worth of diving classes.
breathes out, rant over, thanks for listening....
Really? thats terrible i feel for you......Bastards the lot of em
The other one, and the commy pool when it opens I suspect, only allows diving - no flips etc and not even jumping in of any kind.
In my verrrry long experience of it, there are two things that have never changed about the Commie: one, it smells of Vosene, and two, you're not allowed to jump into the diving pool (but once you're in the air, what are they going to do about it?).
Edit: Jesus, 37 million quid? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commonwealth_Pool
Couldn't agree more rt17, ridiculous, kids got chucked out of our local pool for jumping in, not even bombing, just jumping...go to france kids are backflipping into the pool, no one bats an eyelid... 🙄
37 million quid? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commonwealth_Pool
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yeah - and they haven't put the slides back either!
That does seem ridiculous, when I used to go to our local pool only about 5% of people were diving, particularly off the 5m board. Surely a bad dive is more dangerous than jumping!?
Surely a bad dive is more dangerous than jumping!?
Aye but it's quite self regulating, any tool will jump off a 5m, and some off a 10, but you'll not try and dive a 10 unless you think you can do it, and probably can.
and the tools jumping off the boards would be having a great time....
The OP makes a valid point. Flinging yourself off (not a euphemism) the 5m board when the life guard wasn't looking was a right of passage to a 10 year old boy. Sadly this is no longer allowed.
Won't somebody please think of the children?
yeah, you gotta learn somewhere - after all, wasn't dropping off the kerb the first step into the world of gnarly free riding?
Stupid innit. Great way to learn about gravity.
A badly done dive has more chance of slapping open the thorax than a bad jump.
But you only do a bad back flip off a 3m board once.
The second one I attempted (once I'd stopped crying) was near perfect. A life skill learned inside 10 minutes.
If my lad wanted to do it he'd have to do 10 weeks of trampoline lessons before he'd be allowed anywhere near the diving pool.
The OP makes a valid point. Flinging yourself off (not a euphemism) the 5m board when the life guard wasn't looking was a right of passage to a 10 year old boy. Sadly this is no longer allowed.
This was never allowed, but it was still a right of passage for those of us in Edinburgh, only it was the 10m at the commie! The other half of this was touching the bottom of the diving pool (5m deep!) without diving in.
At school I went on an forces orientation day aimed at kids who were thinking of joining the military (I nearly joined the RAF but decided to piss away 7 years at 6th form/university instead).
They had us jumping off a 10m platform 5 abreast at 10 second intervals. If you dithered the next lot would land on you. None of your H&S rubbish back in 1985.
Grrr.
Dunno about Scotland but down here in the South of England we have rivers and trees.
No lifeguards, no rules, nothing. Just keep throwing yourself off higher and higher branches until someone gets hurt.
Note - smiling whilst doing a front flip and slightly ove-rotating at a height of 6 or so meters will lead to bleeding gums.
Jumping into water. Pah!
We got our kicks jumping off the roof of the school gym.
Puffs the lotta ya!
the diving boards were taken down from our local pool sometime around the mid nineties 🙁
Kev
pretty soon all we'll be able to do in the pool is stand....
pretty soon all we'll be able to do in the pool is stand....
In 3ft of water.
In 3ft of water.
Water at that depth could cause difficulty with walking, any lower would be a trip hazard. Dry pools are the way forward.
In that case a 5m board would be foolish.
Now I understand why they have all been removed.
At our local pool they've brought in a NO DIVING rule even off the side of the pool. 3m deep.
XTreme risk aversion.
They cut down a tree over the river in the local park after some kids posted a youtube video of themselves jumping from it into the river
in fact, this video
(40 secs in is when he jumps, the quality is awful)
When I was a kid there was a swimming pool in Manchester called Sharston baths - anyone from Manc remember it? - that had a high diving board. They used to let anyone jump/dive off it, I landed on my back attempting a sommersalt, I was only 8.
I'm sure they must've had some nasty accidents. The no diving rule is a bit of a kill joy though. I went to La Cinque Terre in Italy and the Italian kids were doing some amazing dives off the cliffs.
Saying that I used to live in Salford Quays and the local scallys would dive off a massive bridge in to the Manchester Ship Canal. Some of them looked like they had real talent.
you know what todays kids are missing....scars..the good kind, hole in the leg from a broken branch, teeth missing from otb moments, you can't become a rounded adult without scars.
Too right Lazybike... how are the youth of today going to recreate this...