I'm making a splash with new pool rules

Will patrons kindly refrain from: ducking, bombing, running, shouting, petting . . .

Nowadays (yes, I have officially reached middle age) such common sense advice is seen as a breach of our basic human rights.

But I say stuff that, its time these signs were ressurected – with the addition of a few of my own new rules.

As a regular patron of my local municipal baths, for which I pay the princely sum of four quid a go, I think it's high time my feedback made it further than the circular filing cabinet that is the comments box.

Firstly, I'd like to see a blanket ban on anyone daft enough to do the butterfly stroke while any other swimmer is in the pool. There's one gent in particular whose performance of said stroke is anything but delicate thereby drenching everyone in the vacinity – even the ladies adamant they will NOT get their hair wet. They say that the flutter of a butterfly's wings can trigger a tsunami on the other side of the world. I'd hate to see the devastation this lad could cause.

Then there's the ladies who congregate at one end of the pool and gas about Dickinson's Real Deal just so they can tell their slimming club leader they went swimming and earn extra cheesecake points.

If that's not bad enough, there's a couple of gents who, post-swim, take a rather intimate shower. Not a problem if this was David Lloyd and boasted private washing facitilites but these are old, Victorian baths with a row of open showers at one end.

Without going into too much detail in a family newspaper there is always a lot of foam and scrubbing – surely these people shower at home, no?

The staff at this pool are not exempt from my rule recommendations either.

Rather than set a healthy example to swimmers these no-sign-of-lifeguards stand on the poolside munching family-sized bags of crisps and swigging cola while flanked by Change 4 Life posters.

I can think of one change I'd like and it's firmer policing of this pool.

There's really only one thing for it. I need my own swimming bath.

Time to enter the Pools, I think. Now I am really showing my age.

One Last Thing. Oh Helen Flannagan. Could you be anymore silly if you tried?

The ex-Corrie star-come glamour puss tweeted that she was alone in her £2 million mansion, only to be visited hours later by a gang of burglars who ransacked the place.

Daft girl, we can all agree. Thing is, she's not the only one who posts this kind of info without thinking of the repercussions.

Friends of mine regularly use social networking sites to announce that they are at the airport and off on a family holiday. Surely, this is a free pass to an opportunist burglar with half a brain?

Now, we all like a brag. You're off to Florida and want the world to know. But do you really want to come home to find your telly's been nicked, do you?