ON MOST mornings I can be heard stumbling around my second floor flat like the mad woman in the attic.

The crashing noises and low curses are part of my daily scrabble to find my swimming costume, drag on my work clothes and locate my keys.

Before long I tumble out into the dark, shivering, with hair still stuck to my face and eyes still partially glued together.

The voice in my head, the one that loves my duvet, weeps quietly.

I arrive at Lakes Leisure, Kendal, with dozens of other dishevelled early morning swimmers.

This is an addiction for many and, for me at least, it has nothing to do with keeping fit. It is an addiction to a feeling.

It started when I was three.

My patient parents taught me to do front crawl and breast stroke and, more importantly, they let me play about.

My friends and I would jump in, get out, jump in, get out, until we were dragged, sulking, back into the changing rooms.

On holiday, in Spain, aged 12, it was still the water’s novelty value that attracted me. I had so much fun falling off my sister’s inflatable dolphin, that I ripped the skin on my legs and convinced everyone I had meningitis.

And as a teenager I loved the Thunderbolt flume, in Nottingham. It was so fast that each time I careered down it a part of me expected to emerge in the Enchanted Wood.

But these days, my attraction to the water is different. Now I swim to escape the madness of modern life.

Because when I’m in the pool I’m not thinking about the phone call I forgot to return, the car MOT I have to organise, where on earth I have misplaced my hat or any of a million other things on my mind.

My feet kick off the back wall and I slip through the water. And that is it - just me, and my hands and my feet, arms and legs and the blue.

The clearest thoughts and smartest ideas I ever have, happen here. Swimming length after length after length.