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Old 11-30-2025, 10:27 AM
Torchwatch Torchwatch is offline
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The novel The Rotters Club by Jonathon Coe has the best description of wearing someone ele's swimming trunks ever.
The hero growing up in 1970s Birmingham, England goes to his local grammar school and is offered a lift to school by his father. The father drives off before he can retrieve his swimming bag from the car. His father drives a brown BL car, everyone in Birmingham drives brown BL cars, BL builds them, no one wants to buy them and BL sell them off cheap to the workers.
Today is swimming in the school pool, if you have no swimming trunks you have to swim naked, double decker buses drive past the school pool and top deck passengers can see inside the pool area. Ben Trotter knows the experience will destroy him. During the morning he tries to negotiate deals with boys from other forms but no one can help. During the lunch break he promises God that he will believe in him for ever if God will give him swimming trunks, a gust of wind blows open a locker revealing a manky pair of swimming trunks a few sizes too big, Ben Trotter thanks God.
I went to my local grammar school in the 1970s, on one occasion we ran cross country against Henry VIII Grammar School from Birmingham, we won!
It's a well written book and worth reading.
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