Blows own very small trumpet

Now* available in book form.

I'm pleased to tell you I've been commissioned by Aurum Press to write a book – Swimming London – about the history of the gerbil as a family pet.

D’oh. JAPES! Always with the japes. Never gets tiresome, does it...

Swimming London will be a guide to the 50 best swimming places in London. It’ll be published in 2014 because swimming takes AGES the way I do it, and finding good places takes even longer; this blog is testimony to that. It’ll be different from the blog, because, er, books are different from the interwebs. Different in tone, too: for a start it'll be positive, which is going to be a fucking nightmare for me, and with no swearing, ditto. 

I’m currently compiling the list of pools -  some of the places will be very familiar to regular readers and swimmers. The usual suspects. But I want to cast my net wide, as wide as within the M25; but there are over 280 public pools alone in London, and then there's lakes, river swims, hotels, clubs, great gym pools etc -  so I could do with some help. I would love to hear recommendations, if you know somewhere excellent that might not be on my radar, or have good reason to nominate your local pool.

While ‘it’s not shit!’ would be a cause for major celebration on this blog, it isn’t a strong enough reason for a pool to be in the top 50. But it would be great to document all the hidden gems out there; I’m sure there are loads. If you can help me find them, that would be SO GREAT. THANKS! 

*soon. Ish. Soonish available in book form. 

(The photo, I hear you all clamour. Who IS that amazing diver in the photo? It's me! doing my third ever dive in Majorca, this June. Since then it's all been downhill in the diving department. I have peaked at dive no. 3.  Still, no one took any pics of the shit dives, they took a pic of the good dive, so please, let this be your abiding image of me.)