600 metres up and down back and forth yesterday, and boy, it felt like a low point, worrying over how to distribute my energies at best around middling in this point in the big pond of life. Today I thought: distribution, what’s the problem? Get it out and around. What’s hard about that? Punters still read, don’t they? I picked up on the distance if not the pace, taking the long view, breathing easier, striding out – can you stride out when your feet are off the bottom in an olympic pool? – anyway striding out on the delusional idea I may even be right, I took every lap as it came, one roll after another. Keep your head cool in the hard bits, I said to myself in the exhaling of CO2 bubbles, let the thing run itself, in a long easy freestyle today. Still feel the old ticker saying, Hey, slow down, so I am taking it easy. That’s the plan: slow down, stay cool, enjoy it, take it easy, don’t expect the world to turn at your speed. It will speed up or slow down by itself, so don’t you speed up yourself, roll easy and kick off the wall, swim right through the bubble and chop. 1500 metres. Felt good.
The Big Swim
So: In the beginning Hackney Council recreated the Lido. And the pool took form and filled with water, and darkness once on the face of the deep hole there for no good reason took on light and colour. And the spirit of the big swim moved on the face of the waters.
1000 metres today. Yesterday, 1500, and Monday before that 2000. The week’s running out of steam, the days getting warmer. We’re in early Spring even if the skies are grey. The novel comes off the press at the end of the week. My heart has been thumping during my swims, oil clogged arteries, thick sludgy truck oil that makes London the joy it is at times. Sometimes you cruise the pool sometimes you don’t. I need to drop something from my diet. Roll with the punches. There’s bound to be someone sounding off on freestyle techniques to help me get my breathing right coming out of my tumble turns.
Swimanög 