The Reservoir

One of the things I was saddest to leave behind in Dorset was the sea. My parents' house is only a minute from the waterfront, and my father swims every day year around. I am not that brave, but as lockdown progressed and the water temperature inched above 10 degrees, I began to join him. I love swimming in the sea, I love the beauty of it and the wildness of it, being thrown about in the salty waves. I love the immensity of it, the freedom of knowing that if I wanted to I could keep going for miles. I love feeling like a tiny insignificant speck, and yet full of my own power as I pull myself through the boisterous water.  I'm not, however, a fan of swimming in swimming pools. An open-air pool is pleasant to cool off in on holiday but unless you have some kind of gigantic pool you can never get a good rhythm going because you have to turn around after a few strokes (also, on the few occasions that I have taken a holiday somewhere with a gigantic pool it's been accompanied by a gigantic resort and a gigantic number of small noisy splashy children, so also not especially conducive to swimming). An indoor municipal pool is a thing of misery, from the slippy-floored changing room to the murky footbath to the cold push-button showers to the swimming itself: as I can't do front crawl I am banished from the fast lane, so I have to make my way up the medium lane with all the mismatched people slightly too fast for the slow lane or slightly too slow for the fast, constantly trying to overtake and being kicked in the face or being mown down by people doing the backstroke without looking where they are going, fluorescent lights above, chlorine stinking out my nostrils and burning my eyes, trying not to think about the wispy trails of kid pee and verucca juice in the water going into my mouth while I am telling myself, this is good, I like swimming, at least I'm not running (well, I'm right about that.) My local-ish open air lido is better - I like the space of the sky above me, but so does the whole of the rest of London who have piled into my lane. So letting go of the sea is hard.  A few weeks ago though the old reservoir near my house reopened for open water swimming. I was excited. It's usually used for sailing and canoeing and previously only open to swimmers for a few hours a week, but because of Covid all other activities were suspended so it's been available to swimmers seven days a week. I only moved house recently and had never been there before and I was baffled by the list of regulations. You have to wear a wetsuit or a tow float, you must wear a red swimming hat if over 18, or a green one if 14 to 18 - nobody under 14 can swim there - you have to swim clockwise around the marked course, you aren't allowed to swim backstroke. I mean obviously hurray, screw you backstroke swimmers with your blind flailing ways, but why? Then I got there. Right. The clue was that it's a sailing lake. It's HUGE. They need to be able to see you at a distance (red hats) and find you if you are drowning (tow floats / the buoyancy of the wetsuit keeping you at the surface) and you can't swim on your back because you'll be mistaken for someone calling for help (you are advised to lie on your back and lift an arm if in trouble.) The marked course is a 400 metre loop with a good 100 metres to get out to it from the bank, and you're out of your depth from the start, with nowhere to rest along the course. Lifeguards sit in canoes waiting for signs of trouble. It's heaven, basically (yes, my heaven has lifeguards in canoes, what of it?), a vast expanse of fresh water, easily enough space to spread out from your fellow swimmers, no feet in the face, no chlorine, no artificial lights, just peace, cool clean water, and the immensity of the sky.  Although... it's not quite heaven, as I would cheerfully never wear a swimming hat again for the rest of my life let alone the afterlife, and I can't say anything much more positive about a wetsuit and goggles. I still haven't forgotten the rumour that went around school that if you take your goggles off the wrong way you'll create a vacuum and your eyes will pop out. It's ironic that just before easing into blissful, expansive, freeing water, I have to squeeze myself into garments so constricting I would be more comfortable on the inside of a snake. I suddenly understand why men complain about condoms. Wrestling my head of thick black hair into the circulation-mutilating latex hat I think back sadly to my Amsterdam days where a short evening drive and a stroll through the dunes would take me to the nude beach where I would throw my clothes onto the sand and jump naked into the sea to be lifted and buffeted by the waves while the sun set in front of me... but yeah I think I probably understand why I can't do that in the middle of Stoke Newington, overlooked by the blocks of flats in the ultra Orthodox Jewish area that neighbours the lake.  I swim twice around the course. It takes me about half an hour, all the tension leaving my body as I forget about the hat, the wetsuit and the goggles, the other swimmers, even the lifeguards in the canoes. It's just me and the water and the sky. Then I get out, release my hair and my unpopped eyeballs, dry off, and walk home through the park, feeling magical and restored. It isn't the sea, but it's good enough for me.