WEST RESERVOIR STOKE NEWINGTON
It's 6.15 on a Sunday morning, and I'm
awake. More than awake: I'm packing my bag. In goes some sesame halva
I bought to keep my son going while he's revising but then thought
'fuck it. My need is greater than yours,'* a flask of
minimally-diluted caffeine, and everything neoprene I own. I'm doing
this as silently as I can so as not to wake the house, but we have a
puppy who doesn't understand, I have the Ding Dong Eurovision song
going round in my head and I can't find my car keys. Sorry, house.
It's 7.30am on the same Sunday morning.
I'm standing on a jetty on the edge of a lake watching the sky get light, and wondering
how cold the water is. I'm not in the countryside, I'm not on the outskirts of London, I'm in what is described as 'a picturesque
corner of Stoke Newington'. Normally I associate Stokie with couples
who were once hipsters but then had babies named Olive or Cecil and
had to leave their funtime trousers behind for a more sensible slack.
Today, though, it is full of people like me, only younger. People who
own neoprene. People who have come to this picturesque corner of Stoke
Newington looking for early morning water-based fun. Yeah. You heard
me. Water-based fun, N4! These are crazy times.
