Day 135 – 22nd November 2010

Sea 9.8 degrees. A big drop from over 11 degrees last week. Air 6 degrees.

Not a fab start to the day. Woke up feeling sick and stayed in the bathroom for 20 minutes thinking I was going to be ill, wasn’t though. Got to the beach at 7am; the sea very very calm, hardly a ripple, although I swear it looked colder than usual if that is possible. An amazing sight this morning though was the starlings, there were three pockets of them, maybe a 100 in each, doing these amazing dances around the pier; it looked like a spell cast by a great wizard; incredible.

My usual friends were in the Arches; Two Bobs, David, Lindy, Paul, Soweichi, Simon; all keen and ready to go. We headed to the sea and all did our usual; some tiptoeing in, some staying close to the edge and some, Simon, Bob & I, taking the plunge and just going for it. It was Cold with a capital C! After a few hundred metres my sickness came back on and I had to stop swimming and just float for a couple of minutes until it subsided. Somehow floating in 10 degree water for a few minutes seemed to do the job and I was able to slowly breaststroke back in to shore. All in all not my greatest swimming experience so far!

After warming up I headed to the office and had my first meeting of the day with Southern Water's Head of Charity Fundraising, Kevin Buck MBE; a really great guy and full of enthusiasm. Despite my feeling unwell and not performing to my usual standard, I think that the meeting went really well; Darren and Micala sat in on the meeting and that certainly made my life easier. Kevin seemed very keen to work with us, especially with Swim4Smiles and also our CHOCS programme; so a very exciting meeting indeed.

After this meeting I headed home at full speed and just made the bathroom in time and then spent the rest of the day and night in bed feeling not so good! This is the first time I’ve been sick for ages, well over a year – I hate being sick!!!