Kayt Turner: 'I swim, I have been told, exactly how you imagine the Queen swims'

I'M NOT what you would call a swimmer. In much the same way that I'm not what you would call a three-day eventer.

I can't go into a pool if there is even the slightest danger that I will be splashed by anyone else and I will not, cannot, put my head under the water. Although, compared with the other gentlewomen of the ladies' swimming mornings at my local baths, I'm Esther Williams. These are the ladies who swim one length, gossip for about 20 minutes before attempting their second one, and then complain as they leave that they come a couple of times a week and yet they still aren't losing any weight. It isn't some mad vanity thing that won't allow me to get my hair wet. This is fear. Pure, unadulterated, heart bursting through my chest fear.

I'm the victim of a 'responsible' adult who thought the best way to teach me to swim was to throw me in the deep end of the pool at Butlins in Filey and see how I got on. Given that I was still choking up chlorine for the next three days, it's not terribly surprising that I have an entrenched fear of water – and Butlins. I managed to get through my childhood dodging any further aquatic involvement. The entreaties of Rolf Harris were nothing to me. He could grab any big toe he liked, so long as it wasn't mine. There was no way on God's green earth that he was going to get me in the water. Mother made me master a basic doggy paddle in the misguided belief that it would help me survive a fall from an ocean-going liner.

Even as a teenager I had no wish to splash about with everyone else. Not even when confronted by the TV public safety broadcast that told how poor Dave kept losing all his birds to blokes like Mike (who, as anyone around in the Seventies can tell you, could "swim like a fish").

I managed to bowl along quite happily without getting my cozzy wet. It wasn't until I was married that Mr Turner persuaded me that I should really learn to swim properly. Amazing what young love can achieve, eh?

My sedate breast stroke is as far as I got, though. I swim, I have been told, exactly how you imagine the Queen swims. No front crawl, no backstroke. No showy water gymnastics. I've never had to pay any attention to the Rules of the Pool. I'm as likely to be found heavy petting in the deep end as I am bombing my fellow swimmers. I can't even jump into the water – I have to descend using the steps.

This may well involve me walking the length of the pool in order to use the ladder, but the fear of diving into water far outweighs any embarrassment I might have at padding along in my swimsuit.

And so to last week when we had the kids away on holiday. As siblings and cousins splashed about and generally gave the impression of being half-otter, the young 'un sat wistfully at the side. Not only can he not swim, he's terrified of the water.

The one time he was bribed into the water he made me grip him so tightly he now has eight bruises on his chest and two slightly larger ones on his back from the impression of my fingers.

I must confess that he made such a fuss there was a moment – just a brief one – when I was tempted to let go and see how he got on. It seems that fear may make you learn, but it doesn't make you learn how to teach.