By: SUZY TURNER
Suzy Turner has lived in Portugal for 22 years and works as a freelance writer. As well as putting pen to paper for The Resident’s fashion section, she contributes to the parenting, beauty and travel columns. She is also our Features Editor.
YVONNE FISHER is making a difference in many people’s lives.
Last month we saw how she teaches young babies and toddlers to turn around and grab the edge of a swimming pool to prevent them from drowning. However there is much more to Yvonne’s classes – she also gives older children, as well as adults, an ease in the water, giving them the necessary skills to swim with confidence.
Joshua is just four-and-a-half and is akin to a dolphin in the swimming pool! Having had lessons with Yvonne since he was just three years old, he is now able to swim many different strokes including the butterfly – all of which he does with natural flare and enthusiasm. “I am much more comfortable with Joshua around the pool now,” says his mum, Kathy.
Lorenzo is a three-and-a-half-year-old who has been having classes since he was just four months old. “He is a great little swimmer,” says Yvonne, “his only difficulty is the separation anxiety he experiences with his mother. He’s fine in the water but the second he notices her watching, he cries for her. He has the same problem at crèche…but he does swim so well!”
Yvonne holds a swimming club every week, in which children aged from around seven, and able to swim all four strokes, have lots of fun in a controlled environment – from diving through hoops, to learning about survival in the water. There has even been a PJ ‘party’ in which the children were in the pool in their pyjamas to learn the feeling of falling in fully clothed.
Other really strong swimmers are Billy, six, Yasmyn, eight, and Charlie, 11, all of whom have been involved with Yvonne’s classes and/or club for a few years. “Billy tends to paddle about while his brother and sister are doing lengths during the club!” says Yvonne. Their mother, Charlotte, feels so much more at ease now, no longer having to worry about them when they are in the pool.
Recommended
Yvonne’s swimming classes began in the Algarve five years ago at NECI in Luz, and started in a Jacuzzi! “It was great until the babies started growing,” laughs Yvonne. The group found an alternative location at Jardim das Dunas when Emily Shephard’s offer of a pool really got the lessons off the ground. Classes continued there for three years until it closed down. Fortunately for Yvonne, Joshua’s father Philip, happened to be the director of the Boavista resort, near Lagos, and was able to offer the perfect premises for her classes. “The rest, as they say, is history,” she says.
The first child to have a class at the new location was little Jessica, a young girl whose classes were in addition to physiotherapy, after she tragically lost the fingers of her left hand in an accident. Yvonne says, “She is now doing extremely well and is becoming a beautiful swimmer. We are so proud of her”.
Having been recommended Yvonne’s swimming classes by the receptionist at their holiday complex in the western Algarve, Nuala, Joe and their two boys Alex, 5, and Adam, 6, are thrilled by the results. “The improvement after two lessons with the boys was so good that my wife decided to have lessons herself. Within 30 minutes she was swimming with her head underwater – something she had always been afraid to do. I had my first lesson this morning and the technique Yvonne is showing me is helping me swim the ‘right’ way – not what I have been doing for 30 years! I would highly recommend Yvonne to anyone, whether they are a child starting off or an adult wanting to improve,” enthuses Joe.
Nuala adds: “The kids are thrilled that they now have their mum in the pool too. Yvonne possesses a gentle persuasiveness that feeds into the scared beginner and, before you know it, you’re swimming like a fish!”
Yvonne is assisted by Marion Zetler, a bubbly long term resident of the Algarve, who worked for 16 years as a children’s nurse before moving here. She is responsible for taking bookings and general PR and is noticeably proud of what Yvonne has achieved. “Yvonne’s classes are so unique. I am so proud of her. It is so obvious that she loves what she is doing and she does it so well. If a child cries, she hugs them. If they are naughty, she puts them in the ‘naughty seat’! She has such a natural affinity with them and it’s just wonderful to see,” she says.
‘Safety in the water’ correction
We inadvertently printed the wrong telephone number for swimming teacher Yvonne Fisher in the feature Safety in the Water in The Resident edition August 15. The correct number should be 917 953 914. Our apologies go out to Yvonne.
