I like having swimming things to look forward to, but particularly ones I can get to on the bus. Here’s three I’ve got my eye on – one short term, one medium term and one so far in the future that buses will have been replaced by personal jetpacks by then.
In the short term: shiny new pools. I do love baths – even the word is satisfying chunky, not thin and weedy like “leisure centre”. But I also love shiny new pools (I may be shallow, but at least I’m layered. I’m basically a lasagne). It’s all that glass and concrete, light and space; new lockers, new tiles, clean water. The one I’m most looking forward to, which most perfectly fills that brief, opens next April: the famous Aquatics Centre. Its not one but two 50m pools will bring the number of 50m indoor pools in London to a dazzling five. (The other three are at Hillingdon, Gurnell and Crystal Palace. For comparison, according to the book Great Lengths, a fantastic history of indoor pools, there are 18 50m pools in Paris alone – almost as many as in the whole of Britain. Lucky Paris.) I didn’t see this pool in action – the only Olympic tickets I could have got were £900 for the pair, and I figured that if I were going to buy a pair of anything for £900, it would be cheap breasts.
But I was lucky enough to get a tour while the centre was being turned into a public swimming space, and it is glorious. Each of the pools has a different ambience – one under a waffled Middle Eastern-style low ceiling and an almost golden light; the other, the TV star, sits centrally in the belly of a enormous polished concrete whale, the diving boards rising from the floor at the end like baleens. Greenwich Leisure Limited, which will be running the pool, has agreed to keep entrance prices in line with other local facilities, so this will really be proper legacy stuff. I can’t wait.
The medium-term thing I’m looking forward to is planned for 2015: a swim at the very heart of my city. The Thames is what London is built around, shaped by and tribalised by. Swim the Thames is a mass swim across the river, south to north, from near Tower Bridge, an area appropriately called the Pool of London. The aim is to get 100 people doing a controlled, safe and legal swim across. Clearly, it would be extremely negligent to do it in any way other than fully supported by Port of London Authority. The organiser Amy Sharrocks says in the blurb: “We are reassured on many sides that the river is clean enough to swim in, so for one day let’s submerge ourselves, dive in together and swim across the tide.” All of which is right up my schwimstrasse, so I’ve put my name on the list. Why not add yours?
Mention swimming in the Thames and everyone brings out their vomiting tales, so this next one will open the gates to D&V hell. For what it’s worth, I’ve swum in the Thames a few times and been utterly fine. So at some time far off in the distance (2023), I’ll pop on my jetpack and zoom off for a rare treat: a new lido. I’m as full of anticipation as a kid waiting for Christmas. The proposed Thames Baths Project, developed by architects Studio Octopi, puts a lido by Blackfriars Bridge. The New York floating pool is making a comeback – but that’s plonked on top of the river. This one is not just on the water, it’s in and of the water (though with protection from flotsam and passing river trade). The drawings are so tempting: a naturally landscaped site with floating pools filled by the tide would make a stunning addition to the river. To allay any immediate “I’m not going in there, I’ll get the fearsome squits and die” conversations, by 2023 the new “super sewer” will be in place, so water quality will be far superior. When the first sewers were opened in 1875, swimming in the river became commonplace – so this is at once terribly modern and also harks back to old times (without the concomitant death rates).
I’m an optimistic realist. I know that Christmas always comes and new lidos rarely do. In Victorian times, plans like this might have found favour with rich philanthropists; in these days of “progress”, a backer is more likely to be corporate. I suggest they approach Coca-Cola, because the only time I consider drinking the foul stuff is when I get out of the Thames – its germ-killing abilities are legend among swimmers. I’m amazed they don’t use that in their ads.
All these things are London-centric, because that’s where I live – but have jetpack, will travel. So at the risk of making the comments section into a community notice board, and on the basis that there would be nothing wrong with that at all, I’d like some more swimming things in the capital and nationwide to look forward to. Any suggestions?
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