When Shirani Maria Assunta Perera left me, I became a fanatical swimmer. God knows why – until then, I’d barely ventured into the water for twenty years.

My dad taught me backstroke when we were on holiday in Lynmouth, North Devon. I would wade out until the water was up to my chest, then swim back to the beach.

The problem with backstroke is, you can’t see where you’re going. Somehow I managed to execute a 180 degree turn and by the time I realised, I was halfway across the Bristol Channel.

Thanks to the intervention of an eagle-eyed bather, I survived, but I didn’t swim again until the day after Shirani Maria Assunta Perera ran off with the removals man.

Every day, I would rise early so I could be at Balham Public Baths when the doors opened at 7am. It was absolutely crucial that I was first into the pool.

An indoor swimming pool before the mirror of its surface has been shattered is a rare perfection indeed. The air above it is so humid as to be almost visible and the only sound is the low hum of the chlorination plant.

I would stand for a while at the head of the pool, absorbing the almost erotic quality of its stillness, then launch myself headlong into its cool embrace in a long, low dive that would take me halfway down of its length. And then the spell would be broken until an hour or so after the last bather had emerged, dripping, at the end of the day, and silence and gossamer perfection were restored.  

In the evening after work, I would cycle from the West End to the modern swimming pool at Swiss Cottage where the water was at least five degrees cooler than at Balham. There was a tower, too, with diving boards of varying heights. I trained myself to use the highest one by jumping off it drunk, then gradually reducing my alcohol intake until I could do it sober.

This strategy worked a treat.  Perhaps it could be applied to other high-stress activities, like eye surgery or bomb disposal.

The most beautiful pool on my daily round was at Marshall Street in Soho, where I would swim during my lunch break. It was in a fading, art deco masterpiece with soaring ceilings and pastel-hued murals in the Egyptian and Aztec styles.

There was an eighteen-inch drop from the lip of the pool to the water that encouraged most people to use the ladders at either end.  

There was also a springboard – quite unusual, even in those innocent days before injury claims and punitive damages.

The last time I swam there, I was suffering from a crushing hangover (even the morning’s session at Balham hadn’t annulled the effects of the previous evening’s diving practice).

The pool was too crowded for any serious swimming and in any case I felt too ill for prolonged exercise. I studied my fellow bathers. One in particular caught my eye – in fact, his image was scorched upon my retinas forever.

He bore a striking resemblance to Jimmy Saville. He was quite elderly but his long, straight hair was dyed an impossible golden blond. His body was a deep sun-bed brown and the wrinkled skin of his back hung like rouched curtains down to the waistband of his trunks.

In fact, the trunks were the first clue that I was about to enter the realm of nightmares.  They were of an antiquated design, green canvas-like material held up by a narrow belt of cream plastic. Where you might expect to see the indistinct outline of his manhood, there protruded instead a large, perfectly symmetrical cone. This was framed by two straps that were attached to the belt and that ran down on either side of the cone in a V shape. They must have met beneath his legs because it was a single strip of cream plastic that passed up between his buttocks to rejoin the belt at the rear.

In my hungover, neurotic state, this contrivance inspired in me a sort of spiralling horror – yet I couldn’t look away. I was mesmerized.

To make things worse, he didn’t actually swim, or even enter the water. He simply stood at the end of the springboard and bounced up and down. Just when I thought he was going to dive, he would twist through 180 degrees in mid-air, then carry on bouncing with his ghastly buttocks facing the pool.

It was a tableau from the hydrotherapy department of a lunatic asylum.

Finally, he lost his footing and tumbled headlong into the water. I’d decided that he probably couldn’t swim, but I was wrong. Quite unfazed, he reached the side with a couple of powerful strokes. Then he reached up to the lip of the pool with both hands and hauled himself out of the water.

For a moment, his legs were dangling in the water while his torso was pressed flat upon the pool surround. It was then that I saw the terrible, terrible thing: bursting from the crotch of his green canvas trunks and plastered to his inner thighs were, wait for it… feathers.

It was a miracle I didn’t scream. I was out of the pool like a Polaris missile and I never went back.  In fact, the incident cured me of my swimming fixation, instantly and completely.

Yet that last, apocalyptic image has haunted me ever since. Perhaps committing it to paper will finally drain it of its awful power.