The Dive, Derby Street Baths

Signed print 38cm x 28cm 

"I attended Westoe Secondary Modern School for boys.  I excelled in all the wrong things, football, cricket, gymnastics and art. None of these were great stepping stones to an academic career.  I didn’t particularly care as I was going to be a coal miner like my dad and uncles, I figured that  bumping into Pythagoras down a mine was pretty remote so I didn’t bother learn his theorem. However, I hated swimming lessons because the class had to march a mile to Derby Street swimming baths, towel and cossy under arm summer and winter.  I disliked the smell of chlorine and its effect on the eyes, the cold water and especially the instructor who always carried a length of rubber hose pipe a foot long, anyone that was reluctant to jump in the deep end received a lash behind the knees to coax him into the pee polluted water." - Bob Olley