Colm Tóibín

And it's fine.

I mean, anyone watching it would just think these two guys are insane because also on the way home in the car, I would do a victory speech in Spanish.

And I would go on like that in the car.

He would just say, please stop.

Even at my age, winning a tennis match.

Recently, I had a pain in my hip, which I thought was arthritis.

And I thought, here it comes.

Henry James, when he was dying, said to someone, here it comes, the distinguished thing.

It meant death.

But when I thought I had arthritis in my hip, I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna have to get new hips.

And generally all these old man stuff is coming towards me.

But it wasn't that at all.

It was just some nerve.

But the physio said that his friend

Jim was the trainer of the Columbia men's swimming team.

And that if I wanted to go and get lessons with Jim, Jim, he was sure would do them.

So at eight o'clock on a Monday morning, Jim,

I've never put my head under water and swimming is a big deal because we would go to the beach in the summer in Ireland and of course the sea was so cold and you just stand for, someone told me that in all of the novels, there's a character standing in the sea, desperate not to have to get into it.

and shivering, and then eventually getting the courage, like a sort of, like a cormorant or something, just to get down into the water.

And this is because it happened so much and it was such a big deal.