From 1990 I have been fortunate enough to coach some amazing personalities. The list is too long to begin naming names. I can say the toughest swimmer was Jane and not because she was related to the coach. Tough? Jane was as hard as a rock – seemingly indestructible. She swam 800m when she was three years old and 100×100 on 1.30 at thirteen. She first qualified for the Open Nationals at twelve. The bigger-than-life personality of all time was Olympic Champion Rhi Jeffrey. I even had Committee members warn me about Rhi joining the team. You will never control her they told me. I ignored their advice. Controlling swimmers is not my job. Besides who would want to suffocate Rhi’s most enjoyable feature – her personality? That feature made every day an adventure.

I’d better stop there or I’m going to get into telling you about Skuba, Andrew, Abigail, Eyad, Alison, Tiffany, Toni, Nichola and a handful of others. But I do want to tell you about a swimmer I coached in Florida. His name is Jonathan Golden. He was a very good swimmer but was not a competitive swimmer when he swam with me. He was in his forties and used swimming five times a week for general fitness.

The reason I want to tell you about Jonathan is because of the fun he brought to the pool deck. He is a successful lawyer working for a major asset management company. He is also the owner of the most stunningly high IQ. Walking into the pool at 6.00 am you just never knew what Jonathan was going to come up with. Certainly you knew it was time to start running very fast to keep up with his lightning fast wit.

Jonathan especially enjoyed, my daughter, Jane’s left-wing politics. I enjoy that about her as well. He took to referring to her affectionately as “The Communist”.

But the principal feature of life with Jonathan was the number of times he would say something so outlandish that others around him simply missed the joke. Master running coach Arch Jelley has the same skill. Frequently I would only click on to the meaning of what both of them had said, way too late to suggest I had kept up.

Jonathan was on the Committee of our Florida club. Also on the Committee was a qualified accountant. She did a first class job as club Treasurer. The club’s monthly accounts were on time and immaculate. Sadly though she also had all the unfortunate features attributed to accountants.

You know what I mean. Question – what does a husband say to his accountant wife when he can’t get to sleep? Answer – Darling tell me about your work.

Or, question – what do you call an accountant who always works through lunch, takes two days holiday every two years, is in the office every weekend, and leaves every night after 10 p.m.? Answer – Lazy.

At Jonathan’s first club Committee meeting he had made a valuable contribution to the items on the agenda. It then came time to sit through the accountant’s report. We had received the financial schedules three days earlier so the accountant’s long explanation of the numbers was somewhat tedious and unnecessary.

On this occasion a major item in the accounts was the purchase of two stationary exercise bikes. We got them to add to our pool gym for swimmers to use during their warm-up prior to a weights session. The accountant explained how much we had paid and the discounts she had negotiated. She then made a fatal mistake and asked if there were any questions.

Jonathan brightened up and asked, “Are the two stationary bikes going to be treated as fixed assets?”

It was obviously a joke, a play on “stationary”. But not to our accountant it wasn’t. She proceeded to give us a twenty minute tutorial on the definition of fixed assets and why the bikes could not be included as current assets. I could tell by the end of the tutorial Jonathan was wishing he had better control of his wit. Sadly some people, in Jonathan’s own words, have had their personality surgically removed.

Thank you Jonathan for all your help in the five years I was coaching in Florida. Thank you for all the fun. Thank you for your annual Super Bowl parties. They are all Golden fixed assets in my coaching accounts.