Happy birthday, my blog.

My blog is a year old! Who’d have thought it, my baby *wipes eyes* Now who wants cake? (the cake above was for my birthday last year. A Tooting Lido cake, what could be better? Eternal gratitude to the ever-glorious Maria Von Cake. )

In the last year, I’ve swum in 46 London pools, which is, at a rough guess,  40 too many. A few are great, some of them… well, let’s just say the words ‘fun pool’ will forever strike a chill in my heart. Flumes? Shudder. So far, a total of 870 of my minutes* was spent in Changing Villages, 560* of those 870 in showers of such piddling power it’s a wonder I ever get actually clean. I’ve straddled drains and swum through semi-skimmed milk, and I’ve been followed by some particularly persistent long black hair right across the capital.

*This is a made-up statistic.

And now, at the end of this first glorious year, it’s AWARDS TIME. Drag out your best gold lame costume, boys, and dig out your high-heeled flip flops. Yes, people, I have invented my very own Pool Oscars. In memory of John Cheever, who wrote the short story The Swimmer, I am inaugurating The Cheevers, random made-up categories for the best and worst of what I’ve seen. High Cheevers are good, and Low Cheevers are, natch, bad.

The anorak of life

WAVELENGTHS

Giffin Street 
Deptford,

London, SE8 4RJ


020 8694 9400

Memory is an anorak (is something that sounds like an Alain de Bottox saying). An anorak that promises to be waterproof, which you believe until you get soaked in a downpour. An anorak with lots of pockets, maybe a fisherman’s anorak. Some of the pockets are easily accessible and contain useful stuff (bits of nylon, fishing flies, if we’re going with the fishing theme). Other pockets have holes in them, so things fall through to the lining and you find the hem of your anorak weighted like old curtains with coins. Sometimes, you find another pocket that’s been there all along but you forgot, and when you put your hand in you pull out all sorts of stuff. A half-empty tin of Fisherman’s Friends, maybe. Some bait (now deceased). Other fishing bits (turns out I don’t know much about fishing).  Today I found one of those forgotten pockets, and what a good deep pocket it turned out to be.

Today I went to a pool in Deptford right near the Albany Empire where I used to work, where I co-founded the country’s first Black Comedy Club, and where I was involved with pre-TV Vic and Bob’s Big Night Out (blimey, that dates me, but as I've said before, so does my age). I’m not going to lay out all the memories my visit brought up, because I don’t want to give away all the good bits from the second volume of my autobiography; I’ll stuff them back in my memory anorak.  But suffice to say, it felt odd, good and bad odd; good for the actual times, bad that they'd been so carelessly tucked away, and were so long ago. The High Street looked quite the same but intrinsically different too, but again, so do I.  I can say, though, that if you want halal meat or gaudy sprays of plastic flowers, this is and always was the place to come.

Enough Ham.

EAST HAM LEISURE CENTRE

324 Barking Road 
East Ham


London

E6 2RT

020 8548 5850

Question: Is this place twinned with anywhere in Germany?

Answer: Why yes it is. Kaiserslautern, which translates as Chief Dump.

Why the hell did I choose East Ham? Because back in the mists of 2008, Time Out published a list of London’s best pools (once I have my archiving sorted, this blog is a far superior product) which included this one in the East section, under London Fields and a Virgin Active pool which, as it’s private, makes a nonsense of a publicly-published list, as far as I'm concerned.  Aaaaanyway, I thought, if it’s made a ‘best of’, I better get down there. So off I trogged, passing, on the way, my current favourite derelict pool building, Poplar Baths, on the A13. 

I’d love to get in there, one day. Maybe Time Out will do a ‘best derelict pools’ list? Or maybe I will … 

It's a knockout

YORK HALL

5 Old Ford Road,
Bethnal Green

London

E2 9PJ

020 8980 2243

Question: Is this up the road from London Fields lido? Answer: Yes it is.

Question: So why would anyone go here, instead of there? Answer: I don’t know.

YORK HALL. Why do I think of boxing when I say York Hall?

Oh relax, boxing fans, I know it’s one of the most famous venues in the country, I was just joshing. But that, my friends, is my boxing knowledge all used up. I’m spent. And I promise not to do that writery thing of using a boxing pun at the end, to tie this review up all neat.

YORK HALL. A plaque tells me it was opened in 1929 by the Duke of York - not the Grand Old, he was much earlier, I mean the future George VI. But fittingly, it’s a rather grand old building, with a balcony at the front where I could imagine the Duke and his missus doing a little wave to the massed throngs of Tower Hamlet’s grateful poor. The frontage is shabby but that’s OK. Bright red and green painted railings clash a bit with the faded council smartness - I mean 'Council' from a time when that was regarded as rather posh and respectable, dark wood and brass handles and a proper job for life. The reception still bears the good posture of a well-proportioned hall, even though the sign pointing upstairs to a ‘membership lounge’ looks like a late attempt to poncify it.  I go through to the wet changing area – past a proud and full trophy cabinet  and a contrastingly empty display of ‘employee of the month’. The walls and corridors all look solid and old; they are solid and old, this is a solid and old place.

Dogs or tennis?

WIMBLEDON LEISURE CENTRE

Latimer Road
 Wimbledon



London SW19 1EW

020 8542 1330

There are two Wimbledons: the tennis one, and the dogs one. Everything and everybody falls into one category or the other, except for me, who falls into neither. (No, you can't be both.) One, tennis, is a terrifically charming village (pron. vill-ahj);  the other, dogs, has an indoor shopping centre called, amusingly*, Centre Court. The pool falls into the ‘dogs’ category, I suspect a pool belonging to the ‘tennis’ category would be more Phase Eight and Carluccios and less Morrisons.  And be private.

As we know, I don’t approve of private stuff: schools, hospitals, thoughts, etc. They should all be in the realm of state provision. Also, as we're going there, when I’m in charge, there will be no such thing as ‘choice’, it’s a false illusion, you’ll just get what your given, and all will be well. TRUST ME. However. If ‘getting what you’re given’ means getting pools like this, I will change political tack in a heartbeat, and build my own swimming pool.

(Anyone watch Take Me Out? You know that sound, when they turn their lights off? I just heard that sound... )

In swimming, and in health

MORDEN PARK POOLS

London Road 
Morden
 Surrey
 SM4 5HE

020 8640 6727

Question I asked: is this really in London?

Answer I found: Yes, it’s the London Borough of Merton. (And I’ve done other non-London-seeming postcodes, like Hampton Court, so it counts. But I will forever draw the line at Bromley.)

Question 2: Why is it called pools (plural)?

Answer: Because there’s a little paddling pool by the car park.

Morden Park is a high point - not in anyone’s life, I hope, just on the Morden OS map - and from it, you get a tremendous view down across wherever this is. Outskirts. I've no idea why you'd want to look down on them, but you may be odd. The Park looks like it and its trees has been there forever. Them as knows me know I love an old tree. And Wikipedia confirms, it actually has been there forever, there’s even an ancient burial mound on it somewhere, but fortunately, I'm here alone so I don't have to go trekking off to find it and be 'interested'. Right at the toppermost point, beside the car park, is a square Georgian house in which people can get married. I think that’s a first for this blog: a place that doubles as swimming and wedding venue. I do, but only if your front crawl is up to scratch. I'd certainly like to see the Speedo wedding dress - I wonder if you'd go racer back, or endurance? 

IF YOU'RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT...

DULWICH LEISURE CENTRE

2b Crystal Palace Road


Dulwich, London, SE22 9HB

0844 893 3888

Added bonus: Sweets, and painting.

Negative: .... clap your hands

Whichever way you look at it, this building has a nice frontage. On the main road is the original 1892 entrance to the Dulwich Public Baths which looks as grand as it sounds, you can imagine men with whiskers and frock coats swanning about there whipping things. There’s a good picture of it in my new favourite best book 'Great Lengths: The historic indoor swimming pools of Britain' by Dr Ian Gordon and Simon Inglis. This is like a companion piece to Janet Smith's superb lido book, 'Liquid Assets' - both published by English Heritage and essential, really, if you're going for the full swimming book library. I had no idea that I was going to an historic pool til I got this book, it made me much more keen to get to East Dulwich (a nice bit of branding for an area you might otherwise know as Camberwell or Peckham). And rather than botch up the fancy front, they've added a new  modern entrance on a side road. Properly accessible, nice, very zhoosy* with the obligatory dark wood and glass. Which do I prefer, old or new? Neither, they both have their place. Oh my, I must be in a good mood.