City vs Heath pt 3

Last Thursday's editorial in the Camden New Journal on this ongoing story makes an interesting point about Common Land.

The Urban Swimmer has also found this website protesting the building/renovation of a number of dams affecting the Hampstead Ponds.

Living in a Box

Not a dire eighties pop comeback but The Urban Swimmer at Golden Lane Sport and Fitness.

 

Last week saw the re-opening of the pool at Golden Lane Leisure Centre, now re-branded as Golden Lane Sport and Fitness. The centre has been closed for a year being refurbished and although the bulk of the gym opened in February, the pool only re-opened on Monday. Thus quick as a flash The Urban Swimmer got himself down there before the lanes got clogged.

If you are unfamiliar with the place, it's a 1960's building packed away behind the main Barbican complex and was designed by the same Architects: Chamberlain, Powell, and Bon. They actually designed the Golden Lanes Estate before the Barbican. Minimalist, brutal, 60s architecture being the key concept here, the pool sits in a large glass box that can be viewed by passersby on two levels. It's a bit like swimming in one of those large plexiglass squash courts, though in some ways a refreshing change from the standard indoor swimming pool.

Barely free of the smell of fresh paint, the place looks spanking new. The  pool itself is a rather odd size, 20m long and about 8m wide. It feels like a very grown-up affair going quite deep three-quarters of the way across. At the time of The Urban Swimmer's visit the pool had rather sensibly been split into just three lanes. It wasn't very busy (the lifeguard looked very bored) and at present Golden Lane is open pleasantly late to evening swimmers.

The Golden Lane web site/press release likes to make much of the fact that "the only public leisure centre in the City’s Square Mile, re-opens its doors today". Ooops! There they go again calling it a Leisure Centre. The funny thing is, the place is trying really, really hard to look like a private gym. It may have been a first week thing but when TUS visited the people on reception were wearing suits. They were just as inattentive as average leisure centre staff but bless them they were trying. Maybe they feel that this being the financial district this is the thing to do. The gym now becoming the de-rigueur mark of corporate culture, TUS can't help but feel that the City is already full of slick looking, and exceedingly underused gyms - does it really need more clones? Has the blandness of the 1970s, Brittas Empire, track-suited Leisure Centre simply been replaced by the blandness of the modern, wood floored, metallic edged, running machine, faux-corporate gym?

A one off swim costs about a fiver, but if you're in the City and can't wait for the Iron Monger Row Baths to re-open it's a nice enough swim in an interesting setting.

Brrrrr!

Splendid video from Guardian travel writer Alastair Sawday, on crazy all weather sea swimmers in Penzance, spotted it yesterday when it was posted on The Swimmer as Hero group blog, so why not check it out there.

This video almost makes you want to try it because it looks really fun...well almost.

City vs Heath update

The Ham and High (the local Hampstead and Highgate newspaper) has now picked up on the story run earlier this week by the Evening Standard, that The Urban Swimmer noted on Tuesday. Read it here.

A Judgement of Paris

In a follow up to the piece where I wrote about swimming in the Thames, I came across Matthew Paris's amusing tale of late night, guerrilla urban swimming in the Thames. The article from the London Evening Standard, was originally published in The Times. At the time Paris took a bit a critical beating for his risky antics. Mid-life crisis or not Mr Paris, The Urban Swimmer salutes you.

City of London Corporation versus Heath Swimmers

Intriguing A.N.Wilson piece in tonight's London Evening Standard on the supposed row over whether Hampstead Heath starts charging (or enforcing charges) for use of the outdoor swimming ponds.

The Urban Swimmer has had a quick troll around the web, including on the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association website and can find no other information on the story...the Corporation of London has advertised charges at the Ponds in it publicity materials for years, so TUS is confused as to whether this is a breaking story or lazy journalism. Certainly it bares all the marks of the later. "Rural Paradise of the north London lefties" rather ignores the fact the Parliamentary seat of Hampstead and ahem...Kilburn, has a Labour majority of just 42 votes; and while the Highgate ward (East Heath) is represented by 3 Labour councilors in the Borough of Camden, Hampstead Town (West Heath) is represented by two Conservatives and a Liberal Democrat. Also is it just TUS, or has an entire paragraph been devoted gay cruising for er...no real reason other than to crack a joke that ceased being relevant in 1974. Oh well perhaps we will learn more in the future...

More than Cuckoo Clocks

The Urban Swimmer is no longer convinced about Harry Lime's take on the Swiss. Found this excellent article is the Guardian on Urban Swimming in Switzerland. What a thoroughly civilised lot they seem.

Warning, this will make long for Summer.

Also came across this on the BBC about swimming in Berne's Aar River.

The Rite of Spring

For the first time in 2012 it is now light enough for The Urban Swimmer to run through Regent's Park when he leaves his central London office at 5.30pm. Reinvigorated by the feeling that Spring is here, despite this week's cold spell, TUS decided it was time for a sojourn along the Lucinda River to pools new. It was thus with an intrepid mind that he set off on an odyssey to darkest Crouch End and The Park Road Leisure Centre.

Crouch End, other than sounding like a place straight out of Harry Potter, is the sort of North London neighbourhood that attracts a fierce loyalty. Somehow despite being a North Londoner, TUS has never ventured there. It was mostly dark by the time TUS got there, but it seemed like a nice enough place. Depending on how you travel The Park Road Leisure Centre is about a mile walk from the Archway or Highgate underground stations. In The Urban Swimmer's haste to complete his Spring odyssey he forgot to pack his swimming goggles. Consequently a lot of the following information may be entirely inaccurate, since most of it was conducted in a slightly red-eyed blur. He would also like to apologise to  any  of his fellow  swimmers who he may have carved up, slowed down, concussed or caused to crash/sink as a result of his temporary blindness. Thank goodness the task of TUS prevents him from returning too often to the scenes of his crimes!

Park Road is a virtual aquatic centre: there is whopping 50m lido open in the summer, a 25m standard pool, a small square kiddies training pool and get this, a small diving pool. The dive pool was closed off when TUS visited, but the sight alone of a springboard got him jolly excited. The centre has a rather 1970s/80s utilitarian feel to it, lots of tiled concrete and glass; and strange mirrored walls in a lot of the pool area. It costs about four quid for a swim; there is also a rather pleasant looking poolside sauna and steam-room which TUS will make a point of visiting next time he is there. The changing rooms are sizable but a bizarre labyrinth of men's, women's, family and group sections and private cubicles, with the lockers awkwardly  positioned away from where you change. The communal showers are warm but pretty pathetic; in the inner sanctum of the male changing area TUS found a few with slightly better pressure, but nothing great. There is a slightly comical passageway between the changing rooms and the main pool area where you have to walk through a series of water jets - you WILL shower before using the pool! TUS could not help but notice that there were also a number of cold water jets that could be activated with the press of a button - thus forcing anyone behind to be sprayed with cold water. TUS could not possibly publicly endorse such behaviour in his blog. He would however say that the word Frolic seems entirely appropriate for poolside behaviour, the word originates from 14th century dutch Vrolijk, and the dutch should know something about water given that much of it is technically below sea level.

Look mum, diving boards!

On the evening of his visit the pool had been split into four wide lanes; two of which were being used by the very enthusiastic yellow capped kids from the Haringey Aquatics Club, thrashing water to within an inch of it's life. This effectively meant that really only one lane was available for lane swimming; but the late-ish hour of his visit meant the pool wasn't horrifically busy.

Kid's pool

Since he was goggle-less,  TUS  used  much  of  his  time  to  practice  some  drills.  This  week  TUS  has  been  devouring Terry Laughlin's 1996 classic, Total  Immersion  Swimming.  Though the  book  is hardly new news, it will  appeal  to you if you like books like Moneyball; since it takes the line of argument that most of what you think you know about a given sport, what most practitioners in the field do, is in fact wrong. It's an idea that instinctively appeals to TUS because well, he's a difficult sod and he likes to question accepted wisdom.  Mostly though, what he has realised in the last few years that unlike most land bound sports, swimming is a sport where technical skill is far more important than fitness or physical prowess. You can see this if you go to your local pool at a moderately busy time, some swimmers cut through water like knives through butter, moving quickly with little splash; while other often more muscular "fitter" swimmers noisily churn water but only move quickly with huge bursts of energy.

TUS is still at the early stages of the book and drills but without going into great detail, he effectively re-builds your front crawl through a series of drills starting from paddling on your back. Consequently TUS can confirm that The Park Road Leisure Centre has a very nice ceiling.

The Swimmer's ripples

The Urban Swimmer considers the cultural legacy of the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie...

The John Cheever short story from which this blog takes it's name, is probably better known in it's iconic movie form. The story of Ned Merrill seems one that continues to fascinate...

Ned Merrill is an athletic, attractive and successful man in his middle years. The character is arrogant, but is some sense still a seemingly heroic figure. Neddy has stayed over after a boozy Saturday night party at a neighbour's house and decides that he will travel home, across the county "swimming" in the pools and ponds of his acquaintances and neighbours. An afternoon cross country jaunt through affluent suburban America, walking and swimming a journey home. 

 That's what I think of GLL pool fees.

However as the story evolves, and Neddy swims the "Lucinda River" we realise that Neddy's life is not as glowing as it initially seems. As his day progresses we realise that Neddy has been a womaniser, that his marriage has collapsed, there is the suggestion of some sort of financial scandal, hints of alcoholism and possibly even the idea that our "hero" has had some kind of breakdown, possibly he has been institutionalised. By the end of Cheever's tale, when Ned reaches a home now locked up and empty the reader is not even sure if these events have even happened on the same day, or if these are the mad ramblings of the anchor-less Neddy.

Some view the tale as almost experimental science fiction; others as a sort of critique of the American dream - the darkness beneath the sunny dream of middle-class, suburban  opulence. If you want to read an interesting, though slightly pretentious look at the psychopathology of The Swimmer have a look at this Tintin Törncrantz blog; yes he probably does where a black polo neck.

It's an unsettling enough tale, but something about the iconography of the Burt Lancaster 1968 film (it was shot in 1966) continues to fuel popular culture. Have a look at this 1992 Jeans advert:

Steve was bashful about his Mutant Ninja Turtles leg tattoo.

In advertising it isn't theft, it's homage...honest. As some bright spark on YouTube points out, the last ten seconds of the commercial appear to have been further lifted from the diving scenes in  Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia. Yes that's right, someone sold you jeans based on a story about a man imploding in the American dream and some imagery from a famous Nazi. This is considered an advertising classic. Now go to the dictionary and look up the word irony.

The world of advertising aside though, there is something incredibly strong about the image of the swimming pool in American popular iconography. Think of Ben (Dustin Hoffman) crouching in scuba suit at the bottom of the pool in The Graduate; or David Hockey's American swimming pool images. The suburban American swimming pool is a statement of both opulence and isolated despair.

It was with some interest then that The Urban Swimmer noticed that the Palm Springs Art Museum is currently hosting an exhibition entitled Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982. TUS came across a review of this exhibition in the LA Times, where you can see some great photographs by the likes of Slim Aarons, Mel Roberts, Lawrence Schiller and Ed Ruscha.

The exhibition focuses specifically on LA and southern California with perhaps inevitably an interest in celebrity and Hollywood. Of course Hollywood is a part of the iconography of American aspiration, but The Urban Swimmer wonders if in focusing so much on the west coast the exhibition hasn't missed a trick.

The film of The Swimmer was shot mostly around Westport, CT (the Cheever story does not give a location, though his stories were usually set in the New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts suburbs). On the other side of the Long Island Sound  sits the home of that other great, and older fictional chaser of the American dream: J Gatsby, who meets his sad end in...a swimming pool.

There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water.

It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.

David Hockney isn't the only artist who seems fascinated by the legacy of the Swimming Pool. The Irish video artist Fergal Macarthy was fascinated by the film of The Swimmer, and choose to recreate Ned's journey across contemporary Dublin; see some highlights here. Read about his creation on his blog here.

Above you can see Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich's work: Swimming Pool. One installation of which is in permanent residence at The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

There's also of course, a strong sexual side to The Swimmer's imagery. Burt Lancaster astonishingly was 52 when he made the movie, but he seems ageless in the role. Look at this 2006 L'Hommo fashion shoot by photographer Steven Klein here. Yes, definitely Derek Zoolander territory.

Inevitably it is an iconography that goes full circle, the 1960s imagery of suburban America, fed back to us in movies like Tom Ford's A Single Man, and trend setting (or is it re-setting?) TV shows like Mad Men.

Backyard pools, a show of flesh, aspiration and despair all continue to reflect around our culture like the show of light on water...

An absence of Gin and Blofeld

The Urban Swimmer at the Queen Mother Sports Centre.

I do not expect you to swim Mr Bond, I expect you to die!

This week The Urban Swimmer took a trip to Brighton on a beautiful spring-like day. On his way back into London he thought a swim might be appropriate (all that sea air no doubt), so headed to the Queen Mother Sports Centre on Vauxhall Bridge Road. It's just around the corner from Victoria Station. Despite the name TUS is sad to report that you cannot get a Gin and Dubonnet anywhere on the premises, much to his disappointment. The pool falls within the remit of Westminster Council and like the Marshall Street Baths is run by the GLL. Incidentally GLL, your website sucks. The Centre is in a rather nondescript concrete rectangle in a thoroughly nondescript bit of the  metropolis; The Urban Swimmer felt he was very firmly in a land occupied by commuters.

The centre feels pretty modern. You have the odd experience of climbing up stairs to the reception to walk along walkways that look down on the pools. Yes dear reader, a plural, pools. For within an aircraft hanger sized space which reminded TUS of the lair of a James Bond villain, there are no less than three pools. A standard broad  25 meter long pool, a slightly smaller pool beyond it with a water slide and a small training pool which TUS expected to be filled with sharks with frickin' laser beams strapped to their heads. Sadly it was being used for an adult learner swimming class at the time of his visit. The water slide wasn't working. This is the second time in the last couple of months TUS has visited a pool where the water slide wasn't in operation, and he's starting to wonder if water slides aren't the great white elephants of modern swimming pools. Things that look great at the planning stage, but are either too expensive or too troublesome to be run by centres on a regular basis.

Visiting at around 5pm, the place was busy, and as streams of office workers arrived it got busier. For part of the time that TUS was visiting a water aerobics class was taking place in the secondary pool at the QMSC, which meant he had not only a medley of upbeats tuned played while swimming (with the spectacular noise distortion that only water can provide), but that he got to watch the hilarious instructor bouncing around on the side of the pool with the kind of insane enthusiasm that only aerobics instructors the world over possess. The pool seemed a little chilly at first, but a thorough hour or so of swimming warmed TUS up nicely.

As you would expect at this time and in this location, the QMSC was a busy old pool; but if you're not too bothered about lane swimming with lots of other swimmers it's a competent enough facility. A single swim will cost you £5.45, which if you think about it is ridiculous for a public pool. Sure Westminster residents and Swim London members play much less, but that rather ignores that one of London's wealthier boroughs, with one of the smallest number of residents and lowest Council tax rates is hardly encouraging new swimmers. TUS imagines that he and his fellow swimmers are as a demographic, much likely to trouble it's doctors and hospitals; not to mention that our younger male participants are much less likely to bother the police, schools system and social services with something constructive to channel all that youthful energy/aggression into. Dear Councillors, some joined up thinking is called for...or it's the shark tank for you.