50 JOBS NOT WORTH HAVING: No 6 - Lifeguard

I opened the curtains to a slushy, snowy scene. It was most inhospitable, certainly not one to go out taking photographs with the snow ccoming in almost sideways in the strong easterly wind. So instead I headed for the gym and a quick swim before work. I enjoyed the indoor pool to myself for the first 35 lengths, a real pleasure compared with the trials and tribulations of weaving between slower and faster swimmers. It was only as I left the poolside that I realised that someone was in the outside pool. We have lifeguards ever since the young child drowned in a pool at Salford Quays a few years ago. I changed and grabbed my camera.

The young man was certainly feeling the cold; despite a radiating lamp set above him he was shivering as he watched the lone swimmer complete lengths.??He was happy for me to take a shot. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the swimmer was about to get out of the pool and had to be cajoled into doing an extra length so I could get him in frame!