Given the amount of money that costume manufacturers spend on advertising I
expect to be hunted down and drowned by Speedo. After all, if the pen is
supposed to be mightier than the sword, it is certainly dwarfed by the might
of that classic of literature, the chequebook. However, in case the
moderator of this group (if there is one)  lacks common sense as well as
good taste (he's allowed a lot of my ravings so far), here goes
The first and most fundamental question the swimming philosopher asks is why 
bother with one at all (a costume that is)? It can't be any sense of modesty 
(whatever that means) as today's costumes are so small and body hugging, 
that they don't actually conceal anything except perhaps the colour of a 
tiny portion of your skin. This was not so when I was a lad, before the days 
of lycra etc. I was nurtured on woollen swimming trunks. Don't laugh, we all 
were then. I recall my mother knitting my earliest costumes. Apparently 
derived from the under-wardrobe of Scott of the Antarctic, they were a sort 
of chain mail creation held up by a doughty girdle spliced out of industrial 
strength knicker elastic. Because this aquatic corset was so heavy 
(especially when wet) the elastic had to be so strong Bernard Manning could 
have bungee jumped quite safely with it. Consequently, the red marks around 
my middle used to have only just begun to fade after one week's school 
swimming lesson before the next came along. The trunks would instantly 
water-log and create more drag than Lilly Savage on a hen night. This made 
swimming impossible and, upon hauling the immense gushing weight from the 
pool, it would hang down below my knees like an overdue nappy. At such times 
I wished our family could have been more close knit. The girls had similar 
contraptions but with shoulder straps to take the weight. Unfortunately the 
sodden wool was very stretchy, so it was not unusual to see glum looking 
girls with their wet costumes below navel level, suspended on what looked 
like braces made of well chewed bubble gum.

When I was a little older I was allowed to have shop bought trunks. Being a 
finer yarn these were a slight improvement when dry, but they were still 
made of wool and retained gallons of water, which dripped for hours after 
you had left the water. It was a toss up whether you got nappy rash or 
trench foot when you had a day at the beach. It was on one such excursion 
that I discovered the purpose of the frilly little skirt that all girls 
seemed to have around the bums of their costumes in those days. Clearly it 
was to dry your feet on, so I did. Though I saved myself from trench foot, I 
got a sore behind from the girl's mother for my trouble. The manufacturers 
did not however have my mother's over-engineered view of knicker elastic 
and, though they were more comfortable on dry land, it was quite common to 
see swimmer and costume part company after a dive-in.

Cotton seemed quite common in those times to construct girls' cozzies. 
Lovely and light when dry, and transparent when wet. Later that stretchy 
stuff came along and at last costumes started to be made which retained some 
semblance of shape, albeit the cozzy's shape rather than that of the 
swimmer. For most of my teen years however, I assumed that any material 
which wasn't black didn't float, as you could not buy a costume in any other 
colour, unless you were a body-builder, in which case they were gold lamé.

The modern materials we have now changed all that. Now there are colours and 
styles for all. All women that is. Not all men. Look in any catalogue and 
you will notice that there are no men over a 38" waist. Well there can't be, 
can there? Otherwise there would be costumes for them, and there aren't. The 
downsizing of modern styles coincided with the upsizing of my body, and some 
while ago I started having trouble finding swimming trunks which did not cut 
off the circulation in the matrimonial department. The tiny, hip hugging 
slips which look OK on the top dogs of our sport sadly make me look like 
Billy Bunter in a posing pouch. Utility outweighs vanity in my thinking, and 
I refuse to retreat in to wearing the kind of baggy shorts which adorn the 
nether regions of so many pool users now. Women had the good sense to stop 
trying to swim in divided skirts some hundred years ago, but men seem to 
have re-discovered them in recent times. The voluminous folds of these silly 
garments surround the wearer in the water like the trailing tentacles of a 
Portuguese Man-O-War. Swimming in 'It-Ain't-Half-Hot-Mum' shorts is about as 
easy as getting a Committee meeting over with quickly. Ten steps out of the 
pool or sea and you're back to the days of nappy rash. What's more they trap 
air bubbles in their folds, making it look like you are suffering from 
underwater wind even when you're innocent.

The latest craze for top competitors with more money than sense is the whole 
body suit. This makes you look as if you have been caught trying on Grandad's 
winter combinations. I gather they are so far only used in high class 
competitions but, as badges of The Great, I predict that pester power among 
the young will bring them down to club level galas soon. Imagine though, the 
ignominy of loosing, having spent six months of Dad's beer money on one of 
these body-condoms! Anyway, if such equipment gimmicks are allowed, why stop 
there? Why not allow fins and paddles? No doubt an outboard motor strapped 
to the backside would make you go faster too. However, even if they do work 
(which I doubt) I don't think whole body suits will actually re-introduce 
the Victorian madness of swimming fully dressed, as they could only be of 
any use to swimmers who are good enough to not really need them anyway.

Finally, a word on the proper care of swimming costumes. As any mother will 
know, the care of girls' costumes is fundamentally different from boys'. 
Girls' costumes must be washed after every outing, dried, scented, ironed if 
possible, aired and hung on a hanger among at least a dozen other costumes. 
Boys trunks should be screwed up in to a tiny wet ball and hidden 
indefinitely under a pair of muddy football boots in a bag, together with a 
towel which can be either similarly treated, or more usually lost. The 
advantage of the boys' costume care programme is that it makes the sports 
bag impossible to loose, as it is always instantly located by the pungent 
smell of mildew it exudes.

However, I see more enlightened times ahead. As more people take continental 
holidays they will discover, as I have, that on most French, Dutch, Danish 
and German beaches, once you get a couple of hundred metres away from the 
end of the prom., most people swim in the most comfortable costumes of all - 
their birthday suits. Once you have overcome the head rush of your first 
skinny dip, you will quickly come to realise that nakedness and sex are not 
the same thing, and you have actually been expensively conned all your life. 
The truth is, you don't actually need a costume to swim at all.