We writers are a bunch of tormented souls. I had to be away from the Dome at the start of the week and was startled when I came back to see a note from Jane under I Am An Adult, saying, "Or shall I just fuck off and die?" or something to that effect. I'm really sorry you felt so under the weather, Jane. I know you have a lot to deal with right now, but I hope you're feeling on a bit more of an even keel. I winced with sympathy for you.

Anyway, prompted by Rockie's Vacationswept, which I so liked, I wanted to do something upbeat. I wrote it in mind for trying to sell it to Top Sante, but afterwards wasn't really sure if it was appropriate. But anyway, here goes...

THE CURE

Me and Himself were about to do battle. We were face-to-face in the kitchen, squaring up for a showdown.

“I - need - a - holiday!” This is me, wailing.

“You should’ve bloody well organised one then, shouldn’t yer?”

He had tried to organise something, but it all fell apart at the last moment. Our arrangements for the care of our dog - temporarily renamed that bloody dog - were at the crux of the problem.

I didn’t want to sit around at home. I had been off sick for weeks, staring at four walls. I was due to go back right after my annual leave had run out, and I still didn’t think I could face it - I couldn’t face anything.

We’ve all had them. If you haven’t, count yourself lucky. Those times when you realise you’ve fallen through a hole in time, and in that hole you were so depressed you forgot to be alive. I was still in the hole.

We rowed. He slammed the door on the way out. I was left in a house full of scratchy kids and their noise.

The youngest one must have declared she wanted sweets and called in a long-forgotten, too carelessly made promise. I went with her to the newsagents and on impulse picked up a publication advertising holidays on the front. Dalton’s Weekly. I had never noticed it before.

Back home I scanned through the ads. DOGS WELCOME, one read. I spent ages just looking at it, then suddenly started telephoning the number.

A woman with a soft Welsh voice confirmed she still had a static caravan available, at an unprounceable place that I had to look up on the map. It was miles from anywhere.

Surprisingly, we were going through one of those rare times when money wasn’t a problem. I must have saved loads by not having the expense of going to work, but still being paid the same as if I was. I gave her a credit card number and started packing.

Himself found the packing well advanced by the time he had braved to come back to the house. He tripped over sleeping bags, holdalls packed with clothes, kitchen supplies, and excited children and dog as they danced and skitted about.

He looked warily down, spotted the buckets and spades, and concluded that I was not leaving him - yet.

“You sorted something out, have you?” He asked, in his ask-questions-first approach.

“Yep. You coming?”

He had arranged loads of work to do, but he said cautiously, “If you want me to.”

I told him I wanted him to. He cancelled his appointments and we left about an hour later.

Himself is one of those guys who doesn’t trust a woman behind the wheel of a car. He drove all night while the rest of us slumbered. We woke to blink at the peaks of Snowdonia rising on all sides of us, looking fresh and mighty in the bright early-morning sunlight.

I hadn’t seen mountains like this before. I had to cran my neck to look at the peaks, because they weren’t easily seen from my passenger window. There was plenty to gawp at, to hazily recall the geology part of my schoolgirl geography lessons, to watch the sheep that happily took the slopes in their stride, to look at the occasional campsite, and human life forms at their leisure. We were well and truly away from the everything’s-just-the-same mode of our normal lives.

The unprounceable place in north Wales was on the coast, in a tiny bay, with black sulking mountains rising up about a mile inland. From the road immediately beside the bay, you had to cross over a stretch of monster pebbles about four inches wide, before it fell onto a flat of soft sand that swept out for hundreds of yards down to the shallow sea.

The static was on a tiny site, with only 15 caravans, and literally only across the seafront road. We did all the sort of things that holidaying families do. Children ran about, inspecting the caravan and manically opening all the cupboard doors and exploring the place, the dog barked noisily and moulted everywhere, Himself deposited all our stuff in the middle of the “living room” floor and took photos of the children, who were happy to pose, and I began sorting out the kitchen and mentally planning our next meal. Within about 15 minutes of our arrival, the static van looked like a tip and just like home. Oh well. C’est la vie.

Immediately after a snack, the next item on the holiday agenda was hitting the beach. We ran down there wearing fewer clothes than we had done all year, ill-prepared for any cool sea breezes that might sweep in.

But that day, the weather was kind, and the sea-breezes stayed away. The cold of the sea was invigorating, and a welcome change from the sticky, hot summer air. We scampered to the sea and splashed, we constructed magnificent miniature palaces in the sand, we kept a watchful eye on whatever mischief the kids got up to, and interrupted our dog’s fights with other dogs, and shushed her barking several times a minute. She panicked about the children going into the sea, and being a border collie, she circled them, trying to round them up like sheep. Everyone generally had a nice time, and the depression was temporarily suspended.

At the heart of the depression was a muscular disorder. I spent most of my waking hours in pain, and a lot of my non-waking hours too, since sleep was fragile and easily broken. Yet despite being weak, on the beach that day I waded out deliberately until I was out of my depth. Since the water was shallow for nearly half a mile, it took me nearly 20 minutes to get to that point.

In recent times, I had spent several hours of every day of every week of every month of the past three years contemplating suicide, but that day I was only playing games with myself. If I found myself in trouble, and it ended there, so what?

I doubted that I had the strength to swim back in, given my muscular disorder. But I noticed, just as I had passed out of my depth, that one of the children, complete with rubber ring, was coming out to me and I turned back to guide him to shore.

I played that dangerous game all week, going out until I was out of my depth, unsure if I had the physical strength to opt to save myself. But all week I surprised myself, and returned safely, even on the day Himself had lost his glasses, and we spent hours in the sea trying to look for them. The sea was so clear you could stand chest-high in water, and still see your feet. I tested death several times that day.

I don’t know how, even then, that the idea came to me. Perhaps it was just the rhythmic soothingness that moving in water can have on you. On the fourth day, I suddenly thought “I’m enjoying this”. I strode out of the sea to find Himself watching me. He had been looking at me with that wary, handle-with-care kind of expression on his face, but then he smiled unexpectedly.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” And then I said, “I think I might take up swimming.”

If it wasn’t for his encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have done, but Himself thought it a great idea. When our holiday had ended, he would ask, “So, are you going to the pool today, then?” And I would go.

It took weeks for the cure to even start working. I’m not sure which eased first, the depression, or the physical pain. It was just one of those happy accidents that you sometimes have. Perhaps someone had even advised me before to take up swimming and I just hadn’t listened properly, I don’t know. What I do know is that swimming proved more effective than the physiotherapy sessions I had attended. Something was happening that I never thought was possible: I was slowly getting better.

The first time I went to the pool I swam my hardest and exhausted myself. I had only swum four lengths. I fell into the habit of swimming four times a week, and after about a year, I managed to swim my first mile - 64 lengths. Soon after that, I was swimming a mile every time. Eventually, it got so that I would time how long I would take to swim my mile, shaving off a minute here, two minutes there, from my total. My fastest time has been 41 minutes.

I don’t swim now. It became harder after I stopped working nights and I had less time to myself during the day. The physical pain hasn’t completely gone, but the depression has.

Writing this has reminded me how much I loved swimming and that I really ought to take it up again. I love writing with a passion, but swimming saved my life.