I could have made it
Many, many moons ago, the entire familly flew out to Greece to spend some time with Dodgy Uncle Dimitri. This was 1980, so I was only 3.

We spent some time in Athens, seeing the sights and doing touristy crap for a week. We then went out to Dodgy Uncle Dimitri's villa on some island somewhere. The villa in question fronted onto a small-ish beach. Lovely, white sand, clear blue sea and the bloke who sold the ice-cream and rented out the pedaloes was also (thankfully) the lifeguard.

Every day, my dad would rent a pedalo and him, me, my brother and my two cousins would go on a little trip around the bay the beach was on. Every day, once we got back to about 10ft from shore, my dad would get us kids to jump off and swim back. Great days.

Now I can't remember any of this, I was 29 years ago, afterall.

What I can remeber is the next bit. One of these days, as we were heading out on the pedalo, I looked at the shoreline and thought "I can swim that" so I jumped off the back and started doggy-paddling towards the beach, which was agood half mile away. My dad didn't notice.

My mum was sunbathing and didn't notice either. My brother and cousins thought it was really funny, so didn't mention it.

So I'm happily bobbing along in my armbands, without a care in the world when one of my uncles on the shore notices shouts something really meaningful like "aaaaargh! Argh, argh!", jumps into the sea and starts thrashing towards me. He reckons he was halfway towards me when the lifeguard stopped chatting up the girlies that flocked around him every day (when telling this story, my mum always says how tallented he was, I used to think she was talking about his swimming ability) and noticed what was going on. He sprinted down the beach, Baywatches it into the water, blasts past my uncle and reaches me in mere seconds and drags me back to shore.

My mum was hysterical, my brother and cousins all got a slap for "chucking me off the pedalo" and my dad was in thedoghouse for not noticing I had gone into the water.

I got free icecream for the rest of the holiday for making the lifeguard look like such a hero.
(ScousersPet, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:24, 2 replies)

I wonder...
...if on the first reading of this story, that I'm the only one who accidentally read it as "Lovely, white sand, clear blue sea and the bloke who sold the ice-cream and rented out the pedoes was also (thankfully) the lifeguard."
(Churba, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 14:36, closed)

no
and, tbh, i didn't read it properly until AFTER seeing your reply
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Fri 13 Feb 2009, 15:03, closed)