I WRITE with regard to the letter addressed Pool resembles aftermath of Titanic.

I note with interest that the writer mentions paying £190 a year for swimming, which by my calculations is 52p for each swimming visit per day. This is considerably less than I paid myself to visit the Urmston Leisure Centre with my children two weeks ago.

Having paid over £6 to swim with my children before nine, I was left feeling intimidated and unwelcome by other swimmers also at the pool at that time. One gentleman swimming near pointed at me directly whilst talking to another swimmer about myself and then approached my little boy when he was on his own to tell him to move out of the way. When I approached him myself, I was told by another swimmer that I should go to reception to get a refund, in other words leave the swimming pool to those that hog it at those times.

I was only in there a short time, and during that time the older swimmers had obviously intimidated the life guards into harassing my children. My son, who can swim, was behaving in a considerate manner, and was told not to go into the deep end, and whilst I was taking another child to the toilet, my oldest daughter came out to me crying saying the life guard had said she wasn’t a confident swimmer, which she is.

My children are extremely well behaved and have a lot of respect for older people. It is a shame that the people behaving in such an unpleasant manner in the swimming baths at that time were not deserving of this respect.

I did go to reception, and was told there that I shouldn’t have felt intimidated into leaving, and that they had had problems in the past with older swimmers at that time, who pay a discounted rate for swimming, and think that they own the pool.

Perhaps these people would like to see only the older generations using the pool at any given time, thereby creating a generation of children who aren’t water confident.

Name and address suplied