Reconstituted dried pea
Mumbles Regatta in the early 1980s. I was rowing in a four and we'd have to walk the boat out by wading up to our knees before getting in, to avoid getting the boat scraped by the pebbles.

Which meant getting our feet wet. Being soft jesses, we'd wear out trainers to avoid hurting our feet on the pebbles, discarded broken Felinfoel bottles, etc. but had to take them off again in the boat to fit our feet into the stretchers (being a proper racing boat, there were shoes nailed to them that you'd put your feet in, for better and more reliable grip than using leather straps to secure your own shoes).

My own trainers were cheap & cheerful black ones, whose dye seemed to be making the water at the bottom of the boat (being on the sea racing parallel to the shore meant the waves would slop over the gunwales a bit) turn vivid blue.

Or so I thought - in a later heat that afternoon, I waded out in my socks and the water slopping over the sides was still the colour of Platignum blue ink. Looking across the bay, the steel and chemical works of Swansea and Port Talbot waved back, belching all kinds of smoke into the sky and god knows what into the water.

Haven't been swimming at Mumbles since then.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 2 Nov 2012, 12:39, Reply)