The reluctant dieter: Kira Cochrane on swimming - The Guardian 19th August 2008

In the summers after my father's death, while the rest of my family was eating sticky buns and quietly imploding inside a rented beach hut in Frinton, I was collecting crabs in a bucket and swimming. Mainly swimming. Aged six, I would float for hours, not a thought in my head except the occasional notion that a great white shark might be submerged in the gloom behind me, which would make me splash wildly to shore - only to head straight back out. Paddling around, my skin turning brown in the afternoon sun, I was as calm as I have ever been.

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