I have always loved mermaids, right from a kid, similar to leotards and skirts. Again women had the edge here, mermaids being female. However, the small boy inside still wanted to swim like a mermaid. The film "Splash" became a favourite along side the Australian TV show "H2O".
So life goes on and I came across Eric Ducharme, who like me was mad keen on mermaids, however he did something about it and created a company making tails. He now goes by the title "The Mertailor". https://www.themertailor.com/about-us Like other female things, finding a man doing something makes it easier to do similar. I knew that there were mermen and some pictures of King Neptune show him with a tail, but merfolk are female in the main.
The tails that are really realistic are made of silicon and cost £2,000 or more. Doing more research I discovered that cheaper tails consist of a rubber tail fluke with a material cover for the fluke and your legs.
In my research I decided I liked the Mehina mono fin from Australia https://www.mahinamermaid.com/products/womens A mermaid from Canada did a review of this fin and if you follow her channel, you will see it became her favourite fin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggbXhjR ... gB&index=4 So I bought one.
I then looked for a reasonable tail skin to go over it. The one I found that I liked and was designed to work with the Mahina fin, was from a German company called "Magic Tail" https://www.magictail.net/mermaid-tail-set-Flash-Pro So I bought that too
My love of mermaids was strange for me, since swimming and lying on a beach in the sun, have never been favourite things to do for me. Part of this had always been the wet flappy shorts we get to wear, along with either being cold or sunburnt. The whole faff was not for me, so this mermaiding lark is very out of my normal. One thing I discovered a couple of years back was "Dive Skins" which were developed to help you get into wetsuits. However they have also become great for swimming on their own, fixing my main two complaints. https://slipins.com/en-gb/products/dive ... d-zippered I got mine at a discount since they were discontinuing the purple shell pattern version, but for me it was perfect, being purple.
On YouTube there are many mermaids showing how to swim. My favourite is the "The Magic Crafter" who swims in Lake Michigan in many of her videos. She also has created many different looks to match her various tails, which are mainly silicon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfOingtkZI
https://www.youtube.com/@TheMagicCrafter
So you may be wondering, what Mrs Mouse thinks of all this? Something you may not know is that Mrs Mouse is an avid wild swimmer and is to be found in the local river most morning, even in the winter!
She runs into problems when too much rain makes the local river flood and become dangerous to swim in. Looking into helping Mrs Mouse and providing somewhere for me to try my tail out, I came across a swimming pool installer, in a village near us, who have demonstration pools, which they hire out for private swimming and swimming lessons. We are therefore swimming together, just the two of us in this demo pool.
The pictures of Mouse with a tail.....
These were all taken with a Insta360 in a water proof case floating in this pool, taking 360 degree video, from which I grabbed these stills. The picture of the tail flip at the top of the post is taken from a video that Mrs Mouse took of me. The existence of a picture such as this, when it is me doing the classic tail flip, is heart warming to me.
So there you are, you knew Mouse was crazy, but maybe not this crazy. As I have said in other places, I am having a ball in my old age and doing things that the small boy inside always wanted to do. What is really nice is that Mrs Mouse and I are doing something together that brings both of us pleasure.
