I‘ve been to many changing rooms in my long and (ahem) illustrious swimming life; I hope I have seen the worst and suspect I’ll never see the best. I’ve also swum where there were no changing rooms – it’s the downside to “wild” swimming (or upside when you consider the state of some of them). I’ve been around long enough to see “progress” that sometimes doesn’t feel like that. And having once got changed out of a wetsuit in a minibus with nine other people I hardly knew after a swim in a glacial lake in freezing rain, you’d imagine I’d be loth to moan about basic facilities. You’d be wrong.

The signs pool management need to put up in changing rooms usually give you an idea of the kind of thing patrons would be up to, if they could. “No spitting, no shaving” has been my favourite to date (at Tooting Leisure Centre, for completists). If it hadn’t been for that sign, I’d have been hawking (yes, that word again, it means bringing up phlegm) and scything through my undergrowth with great enthusiasm. At a Virgin gym, I saw a “No paparazzi!” sign, again presumably because if you’re a paparazzo, a sign would be enough to deter you from your mission. “There’s Jennifer Aniston in her scanties. Oh if it weren’t for that sign … ” Being suggestible, the idea of checking out whether my fellow bathers were “famous” hadn’t occurred to me until then; to be honest, Pippa Middleton could have been flossing her bits and I’d have been hard pushed to care less. I once saw someone blow-drying their feet, but I’m sure readers will have seen weirder.

The worst changing rooms have a very particular smell, similar to the tigers’ enclosure in the zoo after a downpour, a feral urine/wet hay fusion. Then there are the mouldy showers with damp plastic curtains that glue to your skin. Clumps of matted black hair in the drains. You can almost see the veruccas lying in wait on the grubby beige tiled floors (or maybe those are bits of rice cake). Tiny graffitied cubicles that you can’t sit down or turn around in. Puddles of lukewarm stagnant water of dubious provenance on the floor. Council posters featuring young people looking at you with haunted eyes. Ach, and lockers. Lockers are a particular annoyance. You pay 20p. You lock your stuff and go for a swim. You return to get your shower stuff. You open your locker and get your shower stuff. Then unless you put another 20p in, you have to leave it open while you shower. Or lockers with padlocks. “Did you bring your own padlock?” No, I tend not to carry such things about my person. So you get given a padlock, lock your glasses in your locker, then can’t see to open the bloody thing again. Lockers are a minefield.

It’s not a shocking revelation to say you’re more likely to find a decent changing room in a private gym. But that doesn’t mean all private gyms have nice changing rooms. Sometimes they have extra little features that don’t quite work – I went to one that had a mini-sauna in what I bet used to be a cupboard. I sat on a bench, knees pressed to the glass door, staring out at people, a tragic shop-window display. Like I was offering very niche services on an Amsterdam street. I was certainly hot.

What private gyms don’t tend to have are mixed changing rooms. That’s a bit of “progress”that makes my heart sink – the changing village. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a changing village full of children to drive an adult completely mad. Why do architects never ask swimmers (or more specifically, me) what they want? I understand the thinking behind them – there is always that time when small boys become slightly less small but not completely independent of their female carers, when to have them in a women’s changing room seems odd. (When they’re about 22, or so.) I do understand that it means people can take kids swimming and not have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help them dress. And hey, it’s a beautiful thing, the family milling together in the changing village, Mummy here and Daddy right next door, not separated by some fascist gender-based rulez. But what about my rights to nudity? I just want to get naked in the shower. You can’t have a proper wash if you keep your costume on, or a decent spit and shave. I realise nudity can cause embarrassment even in single-sex environs (most notably to my own child) but it’s really not on in the changing village, apparently.

Some people see “no nudity” as a bonus – young men, most notably. It seems to really get their goat, the thought of older gents in the buff. I’ve had conversations with young men where they clearly, volubly express how the sight of a naked older man, tackle swinging gaily as a bellringer’s rope, makes them want to pluck out their own eyes. I don’t know what it is about the more pendulous older male genitals that’s such a problem; I don’t think that same visceral reaction applies in the women’s changing rooms, but maybe if I asked some young women they’d tell me how gross it is to see a pair of old boobs. My response would remain the same: get over it. If you’re lucky, one day that will be you.

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