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.) 

swimmingroundedinburgh

or: What I did on my holiday.

For six days this summer, I went to Embra to embrace (ooooh she’s clever) the festival. I say Embra as if I was Irvine Welsh. It probably makes me look like a knob, but I’ll live.  I love this city. I’ve only ever had good times here, in and out of festival time. I’ve had love, fun, shouting, dancing, happy crying, and a lot of lager shandies. I’ve stayed up all night and stayed in bed all day. The only thing I’ve never done here before is heroin. NO NO, I meant ‘go swimming’. I’ve never gone swimming here.  It was mentioning Irvine Welsh made me think of heroin. I blame him. Let’s never mention heroin again.

ANYWAY. Heroi … SWIMMING. (Mutters darkly: ‘focus woman. Focus’.) I was mid-festival, mid-Olympics and there was actual warmth from the sun, so most of my time was spent watching shows, sobbing at amazing sports people or sitting in cafés saying obnoxiously loudly ‘oh my gosh in all my days I’ve never been warm outside in Edinburgh before’ until frankly, if I'd heard me I would have stabbed me with a little traditional knife from down my sock. In the inbetween bits, I managed three pools which come on, is not bad.

The first was Warrender Swim Centre above (formerly known as Warrender Baths, which tells you plenty about its provenance) just up the road from where we were staying. I loved being piped across the Meadows by a practising band, though I don’t think they’re a fixture. This part of the city is huge houses and greenery but down one wide residential road we came to a low red-brick Victorian building with a twiddly stepped gable and little steeples. It was cute.  Up the steps and through the glazed doors to the 25m pool and at first sight – it is fabulous. Beautifully restored in 2005, look at that ceiling! At the other end, there's a beautiful tiled arch. Oh, even the colours I love and blimey those Victorian builders had a good sense of style. As the picture  shows it has changing cubicles down each side, though they’re plastic now rather than the original wood. There are little round steps to get in at each corner, and it curls up at the edges too, so it feels like swimming in an old quilted bag. It’s very hot, the water’s 29degrees. You have to shower in your costume, and as it turns out, this is the same in the other two pools.

The second pool is modern: The Royal Commonwealth Pool. I’ve arranged to swim with someone I met off Twitter, which sounds like one of those things we warn our children against. Fortunately, I’m a grown up and I’ve done a full impact self defence course (I’ll tell you about that one day. Amazing) so I had no qualms waiting for @Shequeen – apart from one. You know that thing when you’re waiting for someone, you spot each other from miles off and wave, then you have to stand awkwardly, waving a bit more, grinning, looking at a very interesting cloud, maybe you start walking towards them or not, do you? you're not sure, they start to hurry, it’s a bit … awkward. I was worried about that. Oh, and you know when you have an online conversation and people say ‘oh we must meet’ and you think ‘CHRIST. I’ll be found out. This version of me is MUCH better than the real thing’.  That, also. Fortunately Shelagh just appeared, and had no intention of abducting me, so I didn't need to employ that trick where you split someone's nose in half via the nostrils. And I ensured I wasn't dull in real life by only speaking in sentences of less than 140 characters so it was like I was on TwitterLive. Threw in the odd hashtag, too. 

This pool is also fabulous. Normally 50m, today it was split and there was a seniors aquafit class, things that would normally ENRAGE me. Today, look at me, on holiday from rage, you could have added a nursery swimming lesson to the mix and I'd have grinned and with a jaunty wave said 'hey kids, jump in, the water's lovely!" The design is typical contemporary pool school:  lots of smooth dark wood, walls of glass, a beautiful diving area and masses of space, including in the water. The changing area is a village and look at me some more! So busy swopping knitting patterns with the lovely @shequeen that I don’t even complain! And I start using too many exclamation marks! Maybe I’m … (ohmygod) happy!

For the third pool I went back to the old, to a pool someone told me was ‘quirky’, and it was. Glenogle Swim Centre on the other side of town,  cottages and bridges and down all the hill and very sweet, then you come face to face with a huge red building that puts it all in the shade. It’s another saved Baths and bloody hell, I take my swimming hat off to the folk of this city who have campaigned to keep their glorious Baths heritage. Again, this is a total treat. On the way in, the tills were not working so they said ‘pay on your way out’, trusting that I would. I did. The stairs up are in a yellow green brown chunky brick Victorian tile, and again, a stunning pool with cubicles down the side and shared ‘no nudity’ showers. This gorgeous sun we're experiencing shining right in the beautiful skylight windows. We (me and my daughter) swim on our own until two little scamps join us. We are seriously practising our new breaststroke learned off the telly, heads bobbing right up there, and they are mostly finding us amusing. And when we do some diving practice, they get out to show us how it's done in that rather lovely loose way that scamps have, as opposed to my rather nervous and laboured thigh-stinging slaps.

If I’d had more time, I’d have gone to Portobello Baths, and for a sea swim there. But if I’d had more time I’d also have undoubtedly found some pools I hated, so let’s be glad I stopped there, eh.

But I’ve learned things.  Edinburghers are never naked in their public swimming facilities, unless it's behind locked cubicle doors. They have machines to spin your costume dry, I like those. And *swaying gently to a guitar-picking hippy* I’ve learned that on holiday, I’m a pushover. In my real life, I would have picked the 50m serious training Commonwealth Pool every day. In holiday mode, I LOVED those beautiful Victorian pools. In a contest of head v heart, heart won. It never does. Happy times.

(On the train home, I discovered that Ian Thorpe was giving swim tips at Tooting Lido. Rage returned: IT’S SO UNFAIR! I’VE PUT IN THE HOURS IN THAT POOL. And when I explained to my son that Thorpedo was at the pool, his raised eyebrow and questioning 'You WHAT?’ told me that Ian Thorpe needs to work on getting a new nickname.)

CHARLTON HESTON MEMORIAL POOL

CHARLTON LIDO

Hornfair Park, Shooters Hill Road

London SE18 4LX

There’s no phone number. You have to email better.org.uk if you have a query or if you want to book in advance. Yes, book in advance, you read that right; it seems odd to me. 

It’s a little known fact that Charlton was named after Charlton Heston, hence the large golden chariot statue in the shopping centre, and their on-going commitment to gun crime,  or ‘homage crime’ as they call it round there.

Ha ha. Obviously that’s a joke. They don’t have a shopping centre in Charlton.

It’s another bloody miserable summer’s day in London, the grey skies pissing endless down on us as we wend our way through the traffic of South East London. ‘We’ is me and Kate, and Kate is lovely Kate from Tooting Lido* whose ability to withstand cold water combined with superb baking skills make her a total catch. That's all my priorities, right there. Oh yea, and she’s completely lovely, which counts too, I hear. (She's already caught, in case you were wondering and also, I'm not running some kind of water/cake-related dating service, however good an idea that is.) We hadn’t, see above, booked in advance. The pool is newly re-opened but we felt that the weather - great weather for swimming outdoors actually - would probably put most fools off.  Kate, being efficient, had looked at the booking system and seen there were plenty of spaces left, so we felt able to risk in. She did try to explain the system to me but as I can’t really see the point of it  I didn’t listen very intently; she works with children  so I think she recognised that 'I stopped listening look. (I'm sure there is a point to the online booking service, if Better** feel like adding a comment?)

Everything but.

SOUTHGATE LEISURE CENTRE

Winchmore Hill Road, Southgate, London N14 6AD

020 8882 7963

Sometimes, it's about everything but the pool. This is one of those times.  

Today, people, I will be attempting a very difficult trick. It is extremely dangerous and I have been training for it for years. Highly skilled personnel are standing by ready to assist me, should my trick fail. Do not try this at home. Today *drum roll*

I will be diving off the top board wearing only a variety of sandwich spreads painted on my body in an edible replica of the Olympic logo.

Don’t worry! It’s a joke! *serious face* I don’t have official permission to replicate the Olympic logo. 

But today, actually, I am doing something a little different. I would call this a ‘blog mash-up’ if using that phrase didn’t make me sound like a middle-aged* Glee fan in a retro Adidas tracksuit who had reluctantly torn herself away from Fifty Shades to get to Pop Choir on time. But I am swimming with another blogger, writer Wendy Lee, who has an eversoslightly different perspective on swimming, and her take on our experience is here. Not so much a mash-up, more a friendly collision. 

BOGOFF

Or: In Which It Turns Out I’m An Utter Arse

BRITTANIA LEISURE CENTRE

40 Hyde Rd London N1 5GU

020 7729 4485

and then... 

 

KING’S HALL LEISURE CENTRE

39 Lower Clapton Road, London E5 0NU

020 8985 2158

This is quite long. Settle yourselves in.

I know about hipsters.  I have sat amongst them admiringly as they drank their old skool tea and listened to them chitter-chatter in gentle mellifluous tones about open access functionality and creative end-use digitality; I’ve watched them ungroom each other, watched how they raise their young. (They mostly don’t have young, but those that do raise them very hipsterishly, a beautiful if randomly dressed sight.) I’m in awe of the hipster, so it’s surprising that I haven’t been to this pool before, being as it’s in the middle of hipster Hoxton. (Try saying that.) I’m glad I’m not one though, it looks hard work and a bit self conscious.  I couldn’t be, anyway, as I have peanut butter on my skinny jeans. Sad face.

For me, the important question has always been: what does a hipster wear for swimming? I glide up to the Brittania leisure centre in eager anticipation. My quest for this answer will at last be found. Alas. It is not to be. 

Wrong side of the Gherkin

MILE END PARK LEISURE CENTRE

190 Burdett Road, Mile End

London E3 4HL

020 8709 4420

Housekeeping note: Please stick with this. I do get to the swimming, eventually ...

The colour of sport in Mile End is yellow. You may be expecting a smart ‘who knew?’ at this point. But I knew. Because I'm a yellow. I shall explain. 

Let’s start with some semantics. There is a seemingly innocuous question that can be particularly revealing about the askers background. It’s this: ‘where were you at school?’ If you get asked that, or the even shorter ‘where were you?’ rather than ‘where did you go to school’ the assumption is that you were ‘somewhere’. By ‘somewhere, they mean ‘somewhere we consider important’ (where ‘important’ means practically in the Cabinet already, and ‘they/we’ means ‘people who need to perpetuate myths about what is best, and then do their utmost to keep them out of people’s reach’.)  If your answer is ‘up the road’ rather than one of the acceptable private names, it shows that you were, in fact,  ‘nowhere’. I went to school ‘nowhere’ though at the time it looked pretty somewhere to me, with all its buildings, teachers, pupils, books etc.

And now, on to statistics. ‘What house were you in?’ is equally revealing. If you went ‘somewhere’, your house was probably named after an Old Boy or (for the more radical establishment) Old Girl whose families had owned whole areas of Surrey or estates in Northumberland.  The rest of us, educated nowhere, split into four easy Houses: Reds, Yellows, Blues and Greens. Around 7% of the UK is privately educated; of the remaining percentage, I suggest we knock off 3% for home educators, because if they were asked which house they were in they would just say ‘my own’. Divide 90 by 4, and we can conclude that 22.5% of us were Yellows.  That’s a lot of Yellows!  I was a Yellow, I probably still am as I never officially signed out; I passed that Yellow birthright down to my own Yellow  children (it was that, or the shooting rights on my little place in Scotland). And in their paint and décor choices, Mile End Park Leisure Centre  has identified itself with the Yellows, has come down not just on the side of the Best of Fellows, but on the whole house colour system. They’re saying proudly: we’re anti-elitist. We, Mile End Park Leisure Centre, are sport for the people. Looking round the area, I’d say they made the right choice.

THIS IS NOT AN ADVERT*

LADYWELL LEISURE CENTRE

261 Lewisham High Street London SE13 6NJ

0208 690 2123

*Or it might be. A bit. In a good way. You’ll thank me.

I was changing in the lilac and purple cubicles of Ladywell Leisure Centre wondering if it was me or the changing room that smelled of wee. Costume on, hat ready, I got my goggles out of the bag but before I could apply my usual anti-fog spray, I noticed they were covered in fine Majorcan sand. I took them to the sink and prodded and poked and waved my hand randomly over the tap before I realised that this was one of those taps you actually had to turn ON. A relic. Sadly I rinsed the sand off the goggles, listening to a couple of women chatting in the shower about how sorry they would be when this pool was gone. The pool was doomed. To be honest, for me it was doomed well before that point. I’m sorry, Ladywell, but I wasn’t swimming on a level playing field.