About four or five years ago my sister asked me to go swimming with her and my nephew, I wasn’t that keen I’m not big on swimming pools and I had no costume but he was so excited and he was only about one or two at the time so I agreed, I was thinking, ok I’ll get a costume the day before. Typical to form I didn’t get a costume and the next morning she came round, I thought I could make excuses and get out of it but she was adamant that I go with her, so we started hoking through my drawers and she pulled out this white patterned string bikini that I had bought for holiday and never worn, I was like NO WAY! but in the house, standing in my clothes somehow it seemed like it would be ok so I packed it up and we set off, it wasn’t until I actually got into the changing room, put it on and went out to the swimming pool that I actually realised how awful it was. Everyone else was in swimsuits and bodysuits and I was standing there ghostly white with a white string bikini on, like I mean across the cleavage was just two triangles so you could see all around each bosom and it was tied around the back with a string and the bottoms were just two small triangles tied at the hips with string….I actually could not have felt worse if I was nude, I mean this is ok if you live in Miami but this is Northern Ireland, people just don’t go to swimming pools in bikinis, but there was nothing to do so I just quickly got in the water, I’m not being paranoid when I say that people were staring, a couple were even embarassedly sniggering and I kept bobbing under the water trying to hide, eventually I was like, I have to get out of here, so I took a deep breath and started climbing out of the water, I had to walk the whole way round the pool to get back to the changing rooms covering my modesty because the bikini had gone a translucent grey colour in the water……to make it the ultimate cringefest there was a man there taking swimming lessons who was a regular in the coffee shop I worked in, he came in EVERY day, the next day I was working he sat at the bench beside my section and I all I could think about was….Oh my, this guy has practically seen me nude….cringe, CRINGE, CRINGE!!!!! 🙁 Tanya – Belfast