Sure you can swim. You just need to sell a kidney first.
Moving out here I now realise there were a few things I took for granted living in London. I don’t particularly miss shopping, coffee shops, nightlife. There is some of this stuff if you don’t mind a drive, although I have noticed that for my ex-Town Mouse friends, they are dying of boredom in the evenings. And they keep asking me “what do you do here?”
I suppose it never dawned me that spending an evening with one’s computer, reading or crocheting in front of IPlayer is not everybody’s cup of tea.
But one thing I am starting to miss is Swimming. I never even thought about it in London. If I wanted to swim (and this is something I crave a lot more in pregnancy!) I paid a few quid and drove a reasonable distance to my local pool. Before we made aliyah I took Jojo swimming fairly regularly, I couldn’t really swim myself with him in tow but I didn’t mind so much as it wasn’t expensive. Even the not-so -nice- bits of London often had decent pools. I remember when they built The Venue in Borhamwood. Not a particularly nice area but it had spanking clean pool facilities. (sorry if I offended anyone, some of my best friends live in Borhamwood…)
Over the summer I took Jojo along to swimming lessons in Misgav, the local country club. They were extremely expensive but the teacher came highly recommended and I was adamant that he should learn to swim. So when his uncle kindly offered to sponsor it, I jumped at the opportunity. It was amazing, he was swimming after a few sessions. The kiddy pool nextdoor was practically empty despite it being the summer holidays (nurseries only close for 2 weeks here) so I let my little ones have a splash in there whilst we waited. This was fine for a few times until the security guard started asking me questions and the moody receptionist tried to charge us. I explained that we were already paying for a lesson, and that we were only there for 20 minutes, and I wasn’t sure what else to do with my little ones during such a short period.
Let’s just say she didn’t care. She wanted 45 shekel for each of them (including a 2 year old who wouldn’t last more than a half hour max) and 55 for me (to stand in a knee-high pool). Being in the I-feel-sick-all -the-time-where-is-the-nearest-sofa stage of pregnancy back in July, I didn’t have the stamina to argue with her. So I demanded to see the manager. I told him that his receptionist had no idea about marketing and was strolling around with her coffee like she owned the joint. He was very strange, said it was fine, and kept asking me about what glass her coffee was in. I’m not sure where he was going with that…
Anyway, this was fine, until a week later when we encountered more black looks from the receptionist and twenty questions from the security guard. Turns out the manager left. So I had to go through it all again. In the end we sat there, me and my little boys, making rude comments about Nazi Policies to anyone who would listen. Not terribly mature I know but I was royally p*ssed off. I would have happily paid a few shekel to use that pool, but 150 shekel for 20 minutes on top of what we were paying for the lessons was out of the question.
We have been researching local pools trying to find something a) open in winter and b) open to general public on a Friday (not just members) and c) affordable. Nothing. We don’t want Jojo to forget his swimming skills so I swallowed my pride, called up Misgav and asked how much it would be for our family (2 adults, 2 kids, one toddler) to go swimming for an hour one Friday morning. I was quoted 300 shekel. The guy didn’t pause, I think he just pulled the number out of nowhere. Anyway I laughed at him and put the phone down. Fifty quid?? for an hour? Or less? 100 US dollars??? Now we realise why the only people who go there are those who can afford membership. (bit of a Catch-22, we would both have to work crazy hours to afford that one and then when would we have time to use the facilities???!
Apparently, the reason for the lack of facilities is the age old issue of the area having keep out The Great Unwashed. This basically means they don’t want it over-run by Arabs. Sounds horribly and disgustingly racist (and I would have been repelled at reading this 5 years ago) But having lived here, I see the problem. The Luna Gal (water park) for example is very expensive. We went on a discount day, but, I kid you not, the park was full of people who quite …..literally had not washed. They were using the place as a giant bathtub. In their clothes. You could actually see Stuff Floating In the Water.
What this basically amounts to is that all parks and what we would call tax-funded facilities have to find a way to deal with people who take advantage, So generally everything is expensive.
If after reading this, you are still appalled at my racism, then I invite you to our local forest. Segev. Its big and beautiful and has many entrances. Those entrances accessible from where the arab towns are located are trashed. There is picnic rubbish everywhere and it is frankly depressing. Those entrances located next to Israeli yeshuivim – my son’s school for example, are clean and well looked after. Pretty much to a National Trust standard.
Living here can unfortunately bring out all sorts of prejudices that were never in my psyche. I feel robbed of these basic local services which have to be priced crazily just so that they can run. I just hope my kids can find a way to be more forgiving.