I am a child of the African sun, after all. My family have been getting their lily white asses burnt for seven generations. When I need to find my happy place, I dive in a pool and after swimming seriously up and down for a bit, as a ruse, I duck beneath the water as soon as no-one's watching and do my Man from Atlantis kick. (Khuh. All those people out there who think Patrick Duffy is famous for being Bobby Ewing in Dallas. Ridiculous.)

In moments of extreme anxiety, while others are burning off their stress with a good bout of breaststroke, I am channelling my inner six-year-old by submerging myself completely underwater and then pushing off from the pool wall with one arm extended in a power salute. (Yes. Exactly like Superman.) I can also stay in the water for eight hours straight, because as long as I keep nothing but my head above water, I never get cold. It's all extra-ordinarily fabulous.

Andreas, on the other hand, is a child of Europe, and is therefore lily white brushed with intimations of blue. Nothing screams "Quick! Wrap him in a woolly mammoth skin!" like a pale European standing outside in a pair of swimming trunks.

And while Andreas can swim (his school took a class trip to the pool one term when he was eleven), he prefers not to. When he does disrobe for a dip, he grows goose pimples the size of grapefruits. It's all a little alarming.

Naturally, we have clashed on the importance of highly chlorinated water in our lives. Andreas believes pools to be rude middle-finger to the environment. I, on the other hand, would sell the house and live in a pool, if that was an option. I am told, unnecessarily forcefully I think, that it is not.

What to do? What to do?
Luckily, we have been saved by the boys. (Has anyone noticed how often children actually solve these family issues, by dint of their mere presence?) Both sons are also waterbabies, which has served to melt Andreas's glacial attitude towards poolage. Let's face it, nothing makes a parent's heart swell with pride like a child who bombdrops into a pool, without so much as dipping a toe in first. (Such courage! Such bravery!)

Our compromise is to spend a great deal of time at our neighbourhood public pool. Every workday evening at precisely 5 pm, Andreas and the boys are standing with towels round their necks in my office foyer. Instead of skulking to the nearby bar to while away rush hour with a few beers, as I used to, I now race to the pool with my boys... thereby getting in an hour or so of swimming and splashing before braving the evening commute.

It's a win win. Andreas gets to relish the fact that we are making use of one of the last public places geared towards building community in our area. I, as a working mother, now get a whole extra hour and a half each day in an active and de-stressing environment with my sons while the boys themselves get a bouncy workout to boot. (Actually, I think that's technically a win win win.)

Meet the people of the public pool
But the real best bit has been discovering the culture of the public pool. Where as gym pools are all about looking shiny and being able to swim dead straight, public pools are a delicious hodgepodge of rainbow burnt people all meeting their own watery needs.

You've got the tiny girl all pink PollyOttered to the gills, looking terrified and shivery in four inches of baby pool water. You've got Beautiful Burly Dude who has been standing on the 10 meter board for 25 minutes, ushering people past him as he can't quite make that leap into the unknown... especially since every sixth person who passes him performs a rather painful sounding bellyflop.

You've got the local Grampa who has been swimming his 20 lengths a day for the last forty years, and by gum, is going to continue to do so. You've got the teenage couple who need to neck right slap bang in between the serious swimmers and of course, you get the serious swimmers, the meanest of whom will fell the tongue-hockey pair with a brutally ragged breaststroke kick ("Oh sorry! Sorry!")

There are families who have clearly been at the pool all day, surrounded by the debris of both lunch and teatime, sprawling next to the tightly zipped togbags of the "grab a workout after work" brigade.

And while I do miss having a pool of my own, I have come to realise that Andreas has a point. A private pool just seems so soulless after the splash, banter and camaraderie of the public pool. So I say to you the same thing that we, as a pool at large, screamed up at Beautiful Burly Dude: Go on. Take the plunge!

This column originally appeared in Child Magazine.