Open Season?

Today we've had the kind of early spring weather that might beguile the brave and the foolish to test the waters of the Granta; today, I spent trawling charity shops for a fancy dress costume - the theme is Wes Anderson, and I shall attend as a Tenenbaum.

Let me tell you about yesterday - when it rained, when the weather was grey, and when Ema and I decided to go running. The plan was to cycle out to Granchester meadows, run to Granchester and cycle back - I can't at this point in time remember WHY we were going running, so don't ask. Just before we pulled out of New Hall, however, I noticed that my back tyre was very flat. Again I forget precisely why, but we decided that, having not run in about a year, we should just go all the way to Granchester, on foot, from there. We did admirably well - by the time we reached the second meadow, Ema's left ankle, my right, her left knee, my right, were complaining rather loudlym or at least inducing us to do so. And then Ema, bright spark, piped up:

"We should have just gone swimming, you know."

Pause. A beat. Me:

"Do you want to?"

We headed back to the swimming hole, running to keep as warm as possible before we got there. Speed seemed important: the longer we took, the more time we had to talk ourselves out of it. We stripped to our underwear, eliciting cheery waves and side-long glances from dog-walkers, cyclists etc. I jumped in, landing up to my knees in slime and up to my neck in the coldest water I have felt since the Alaska Strait. Ema jumped in. I was laughing maniacally - so cold, so far from able to feel my skin, so very, very happy. We swam - Ema breast-stroking as I beat out a spidery crawl in an attempt to get some kind of circulation going - about half way round the first bend up-stream (I wasn't going to risk cramping and getting dragged into the deeper water toward the Newnham Riverbank Club) before we had to emerge.

There is nothing like the feeling of the wind on your body after a swim. It is so warm and, in a strange way, soft. Rain water broke more or less unnoticed on our strange pink all-over raincoats. We walked back along the grass and it wasn't until we stood still to change that my foot, cut very slightly climbing out, actually warmed up enough to bleed. We walked back to Newnham in running gear and wet hair (mine hanging down, hairband bandaging foot)to beg a can of coke from Alison and stay the risk of Weils disease - of which I continue, in Deakin's memory, to be terrified.

Back up to my house for curry and cake.

I don't think I'll return for a week or two - it couldn't have been more than fourteen degrees - but it all felt very wild, and very beautiful. Spring is here, and I have high hopes for the season.

J.
xXx

noto bene:

With the previous post, no. one is the bottom picture, no. two the next one up....

Jordan.
xXx

Dublin last summer.

1)Gloria's entry at Forty Foot (I think - suddenly wondering if this isn't Sea Point)
2)Forty Foot swimming club from the coast.
3)Me swimming at Forty Foot.
4)Beached whales at Forty Foot.
5)Tombstoning.
6)Dublin Bay from Forty Foot.
7)Sizing it Up before the Jump.
8)James Joyce museum, Forty Foot. (Closed.)

Photographs.

Now, I don't really know what I'm doing, so these may well come out in a mess...

Hampstead Ponds

My baptism in these silty springs.

Beautiful Sunday afternoon in Hampstead.
Coldest.
Water.
Ever.

I lasted about a minute and a half, which is good, because they were closing.

I'll be back before November is out. I will, I will, I will.


Gloria

What Happened After Ireland

We've been back since Aug 15th, nearly a month, and money for Common Ground has not-quite-literally been pouring in. If all 1.5 of you who read this want to give us (them) some sponsorship, we'd be most grateful. If you have already, forgive me.
We're also going to put some pictures up soon. We promise. You've never seen a sexier prospect than me in a wetsuit.

Today I went to Brockwell Lido, in S/W London, and it was happy-making. Not least because I haven't swum since Dublin. Also because it was clean, relatively empty, NOT HEATED, and the sun was setting behind the beeches in the park. It's about 35m long, an odd length, and it took me a full 45 min to get used to it, by which time I was tired and got out. I went there a few times when I was little and I remember it being a bit scummy, but now it’s been renovated, and delightful. The showers are adjustable. Adjustable showers! In a public pool!

Anyway, the water. Choppy, from all the hunky men powering up and down in tiny Speedos. And the kids shouting LIDO! as they divebombed the deep end. Beech leaves falling in the water and one of the lifeguards trying to catch them all in a big net before they swam away. I forgot to take my mascara off and emerged a happy panda.

AND IT OPENS AT 6.45am.

I’ll be the first one there tomorrow.


Gloria

The Vital Statistics.

Sorry this has taken longer than I thought - real life takes you over, when you get back to it. Domestic trips to London, Aeschylus and the Importance of the Frontier in American History all take on an unprecedented importance. I do intend to put the photos up now I've got them, as well, but I haven't quite mastered the technology as yet...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Number of Swims (Total): Twelve.
(Gloria): Ten.
(Jordan): Ten.

Number of Places Swum : Seven.
Those being: Sea Point, Forty Foot, Barnaderg Bay (Letterfrack), Dawros River, Tully Lake, Inish Bofin Beach (South), Inish Bofin Beach (North).

Distance Swum (total) : 4130m.
(Gloria): 590m.
(Jordan): 3540m.

Our Companions, some thanks, and people who made the trip what it was :

JENNY. Green Umbrella Man. Alex. Johanna. Seamus. Boy who chatted Gloria up in a bar. Polish man who gave us a ride. Bernard and the Herring Gull. Leo and Rob, for telling me it wasn't a stupid idea in the first place, and for all their support. James for daring to wet his immaculate coiffeur. Benjamin, Iona, Ben, Patrick, Richard, the middle aged men reading the paper naked on the bank of the Granta. Lindsay. Sue and Angela at Common Ground. And Jenny, again. It's only fair.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Wild Swimming is everywhere at the moment. Or at least, all over the liberal press - the Independent ran an article last week, and the Guardian had a fantastic supplement this weekend, with a rather beautiful photgraph of Jesus Green pool. I was rather sorry that Deakin wasn't mentioned in either; it is, afterall, a year since his death now, and I don't believe that wild swimming could ever have attained such a high profile without Waterlog. I would like to take this opportunity one last time to thank him for being such a huge inspiration to me - I've never been moved quite so profoundly by the words of somebody I never knew.

Reading about other swimmers' "raisons de nager" always interest me, and they're often completely different from my own. I feel perhaps more kinship with the sight-seeing swimmer, who wants to look at spider-crabs and perhaps a seal than with the tough old octogenarian looking after their heart-rated by plunging into icy water, perhaps, but no two people ever expound precsely the same philosophy.

I have had a number of very different types of swim this summer - poignant and playful in the moat, the odd "symbolic dip" in hideous weather on hove beach, long swims at Jesus Green, icy early morning swims at Emmanuel before lectures, gruelling and satisfying missions across Sea Point, frightening and exhilarating at Forty Foot... not all quite what I would ordinarily think of as "my style". If you asked me, I would tell you I prefer to be in the sea, I like to know which point I'm swimming to and that I'd like it to be a good long distance away; I like, ordinarily, to swim around 2k, something that there was never opportunity for when we were travelling, and didn't quite know our surroundings.

In Ireland, I discovered swimming as a form of tourism, not only because we were travelling. There was one idyllic beach on Inish Bofin, for example, that you could only reach by either climbing quite tricky rocks over rocks, or swimming across - I travelled there one way, and back the other. It lent a sense of rather Famous Five-ish danger and excitement to the place. At Sea Point and Forty Foot, the local swimming culture was the most remarkable thing; at Letterfrack, we discovered that swimming was a good way to make friends. Our trip sounded eccentric enough to Alex, afterall, that he decided to join us and find out what all the fuss was about.

People, I think, need water. perhaps more than they know.

Jordan.

xXx