You could have knocked me over with a feather when they told me I have been selected to represent Australia at the Olympics.

All that training has finally paid off. The hours I spent in the pool putting my head under water while holding my breath, the floating and then lifting my head to one side to fill my lungs, the spitting on my goggles. The counting in regular rhythm so that I would not bump my head against the other side of the pool before doing one of those graceful somersaults under water, and then heading back in the opposite direction. Why I must have practised that manoeuvre countless times. But what’s a bit of concussion when it comes to human endeavour? I’m nothing if not determined.

Like “a fish out of water”, is how my coach describes me. Quite frankly, I have found all this celebrity status hard to cope with. Imagine a total unknown who has not trained with the famous Aussie swimming team, suddenly making it into one the elite sporting activities. I still can’t believe it.

It seems like only yesterday that I purchased one those Nasa designed swimming leotards on E-Bay. Actually it was about a month ago. I remember I was watching the Aussie swimming championships and there were millions of records being broken. The Commonwealth record was a mere bagatelle. The World record was shattered several times by the same swimmer. There there was the Universe record, the Galaxy record and the Ad infinitum record. Well, there was no stopping the Aussies.

What could possibly explain the collapse of all those records? As you all know by now, those amazing new swimsuits were credited with this remarkable achievement.

I must admit I thought that the ergonomically designed suits looked pretty fantastic as well. I have never seen the swimmers look so good before. They are positively svelte, as sleek as seals in oil. Yes, even the girls, who usually look a little robust around the shoulder area. Honestly, there is not an ounce of flab on them.

So I concluded that even though I could never look as good as our elite swimmers, the body suit could control a few of my unsightly bulges. To be honest, the ravages of time had left their mark on my anatomy and I was in need of an ergonomic girdle.

That’s where E-Bay came in. Now there’s a site! I haven’t tried to buy a missile on the internet lately but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Russian site that was prepared to make a deal.

Well, the new Nasa swimsuit was amazing. I succeeded in cutting more than hour off my PB. And that was over a distance of some fifty metres. Two lengths of my pool. I had never done a length before because I was more accustomed to going across, so that really bowled me over. Wow! Speed is so exhilarating, isn’t it?

It so happened that one of the selectors for the Olympic swimming team was passing by the pool as I sped along. Call it Kismet but there you are. He was dumbfounded by what he saw. An unknown doing a Roadrunner impersonation, except that I didn’t go “Beep Beep” of course. You can’t do that with your head underwater. Cause it would come out as “Gleep Gleep”, wouldn’t it?

So when I finished my lap, he called me over and asked who I was, who was my coach, where did I get those two powerful propellers which I had attached to my ankles.

Oops, did I forget to mention that I have invented a minor improvement which will now be adopted by our Olympic swimmers? It consists of two propellers which one can attach to the bottom of the swimsuit so as to act as speed facilitators. Quite legit, according to Fina. No drugs involved, so they’re ok.

The best thing about the facilitators is that kicking of the feet is now totally unnecessary. In fact, they work at their optimal speed if the swimmer just floats in the water without interfering with the momentum produced by the propellers.

Well, you know the rest by now. I have become so famous that I’ve even had to hire a publicity agent to manage my appearances. And now the selection committee has invited me to train the team in the usage of my invention. So that’s how I’m going to the Olympics.

What the team doesn’t know yet is that I have been secretly working on another invention. It’s a winged keel for our swimmers, but that’s still under wraps, so mum’s the word.