It pays to check.

Before I went to sleep last night, I set an alarm for 4.30. My plan was to get up early, have breakfast, read the paper online and then walk to the swimming pool and be there when it opened at 5.30.

But I didn’t hear the alarm. Why? Because I turned it off before 4.30.

It was raining all night, and the rain woke me about 3-o’clock. I tried to get back to sleep, but I couldn’t because an annoying bird in the tree outside my bedroom window started “singing” and wouldn’t stop. So I cancelled the alarm and got up.

When I left the house, it was still raining, but I didn’t care because I had waterproof shoes on, along with waterproof over-trousers and a raincoat. I also had a big umbrella. But I still got soaked!

Because of the rain, there were big puddles everywhere on the footpaths, and you couldn’t walk in a straight line. You just had to jump from one “dry” spot to the next. That didn’t matter, though, because I was going to get wet in the pool anyway. But that’s all by the by.

I scanned my membership bracelet, and I noticed that I had 9 swims left in my account. But while I was swimming, I kept thinking that I should have 10 left.

On my way out of the building, I asked the lady at reception to check, and I was right. Here’s what the problem was: when I scanned myself in, the scanner was slow, so I must have scanned twice. As I said, it pays to check.