Happy New Year!
Clevedon Marine Lake was nothing like this when I swam in it this morning, at sunrise. The water was serene, with gold glinting off it; the surrounding concrete was lively with people and getting still livelier. We dipped in freezing water and did a runner to the beach, where Prof. Andy Wolf serenaded the low tide with his bagpipes in the manner of 2025’s New Year’s Day, but without the crashing waves and with a lot more room on the deserted beach. This has now become tradition, it has been decreed!
Meanwhile here is a drawing inspired by a Monday morning in December 2024. It is also the picture for my 2026 calendar, still available here…
On Etsy (worldwide):
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4373668662/
On Tizzo (UK only):
https://www.tizzo.co.uk/product.php?Product_ID=2106938443
…If those direct links don’t work please click ‘shop’ in the menu instead.
“You must be joking”
On the tail end of a storm I arrive late – later than usual. Fortunately so does Rita. The lake is nearly deserted. It’s no longer stormy enough that being next to the sea poses significant risk to
life, but still, it is unpromising. Cold and pointy waves bounce about enthusiastically, it’s six-point-something in the water, and the wind is doing its best to make it colder.
Chris and Andy observe our approach with what may have been intended as hard stares, but the stern effect is somewhat spoilt by shivering. Eyes and noses wobble out beneath their Dryrobe hoods, and inform us that they have swum and they are going to the pub. Now. Without delay. And we can swim on our own and join them later.
I look at the wobbling noses and ask cheerfully “the end and back?”
“You must be joking”, says Andy.
Chris adds helpfully that swimming out from the steps is particularly unpleasant, with the wind right in your face. Swimming out from the steps is of course not optional, it’s the direction swims have to be swum in.
But I have gloves. New ones, without holes. Rita and I agree that now is the time for an absolutely faff-less swim. We fling off clothes and hurl ourselves in the splashy freezing stuff. The only way to do this is face down, swim hard and pretend you like it, until you like it.
The enthusiasm of a silly undertaking gets in with us, reluctance never catches up: we left it on the shore. Aware, for all that, of the danger of striking out for the far end of the lake just because Andy and Chris did not, I swim determinedly to the middle buoy, just as far as they had gone. And fail to stop. There is another buoy about the three quarters mark. Reaching that, I somehow don’t manage to turn round there either.
Suddenly the far end is about 20 yards away. Apparently I was never going to turn round till I got to the end. It’s partly the new, hole-less warmish gloves on my hands, but mostly it’s Andy’s “you must be joking”, echoing in my head.
I reach the far end, of course. There is now 250 metres of cold water between me and my clothes. Warmed by smugness, propelled by nervousness, I swim all the way back very close to the shallow side, just in case I have actually got it wrong. This makes the distance longer. And I ponder, on the way back: I used to swim all the way to the end and back if it was at least 5 degrees, and I once did it accidentally at four and a half, gloveless. And that was nothing to some of the freezing loops of Vobster that Ruth and I swam, bordering on silly. Did I get sensible? …or lazy? I get back to find Rita only just getting out ahead of me.
I claim bragging rights in the pub, but next time I imagine Andy and Chris will be joining me. All the way to the end. This is, of course, not a good reason to do something. And yet, it absolutely is.
WaterDrawn 