9/30 Monday was my first swim in four weeks, after the shoulder injury. I had been very worried about the first crawl stroke, and was quite relieved when I could pull it through with only minimal irritation. I still cut my distance by a third, and the crawl part in half. I did use the extra time to practice flip turns, that one movement I didn’t learn as a child, which for that reason isn’t ingrained into me like the others, and which I’m so envious of when I see other swimmers do it. I’ve been tiptoeing around it for years, wondering whether it’s worth the effort, and whether I even have a chance, now in my late fifties.

A reader tells me she’s been reading me for many years, and that she liked my German entries much better. It’s a good thing I am not writing for my readers and do not care which entries they like better. A good reader may also observe that cutting myself loose from my native language is a more radical operation than I may have thought, and that it takes time to find my center of gravity in a foreign-now-first language, on a new platform, while – for some strange reason – cross-posting all over the place.