The glorious men’s pond

On Sunday morning, I got up at shite o’clock to drive Nathan and his sister, Sam to Heathrow Airport. The two of them are off on an antipodean adventure, which starts in New Zealand. Nathan is essentially on a knitting tour of the world, teaching and making special guest appearances at craft shops and yarn festivals down under and in San Francisco. He’ll be away for six weeks, which will be amazing for him, but distinctly odd from my perspective. 

I have a local friend, a Lib Dem activist called Matt, who suggested, some weeks ago, that I might like to join him one Sunday morning for a swim at the men’s pond on Hampstead Heath. It’s curious: I think most people would describe me as a proper “Heath Person”, but, apart from a quick dip on my birthday this year at the mixed ponds, it’s been about fifteen years since I last swam there. I don’t really think you can call yourself a Heath Person unless you regularly take full advantage of all of its natural joys.

I think, perhaps, my problem was always the fact that I’ve never been a big fan of gender segregation. If I can’t share an experience with my female friends, it seems somehow less appealing. The unfortunate fact is that the Mixed Ponds is by far the least pleasant of the three natural swimming ponds. It’s also much more policed as a result of children and women being there. Woe-betide anyone trying to take a photograph there, for example...

It’s strange, one of the major societal shifts I’ve noticed in the last thirty years is the way that children are dealt with. When I was a lad, there were places children just weren’t allowed to visit (including all pubs) because they were considered inappropriate for young people. These days, the emphasis is on all of us to modify our behaviour IN CASE children are present. Hence a teacher, taking a group of school children for a wildlife walk on the Heath a year ago, feeling she had the right to come up to me, whilst I was having my photo taken as part of a professional shoot, to say “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask why you’re taking photographs.” “Because I’m in a public place, you silly woman, and it’s my absolute right to take photographs of whatever I chose to take photographs of - and I’m afraid that includes the children you’ve brought into this public space, who, by the way, are wrecking my photos, so could you take the little shits away?”

Anyway, this, and some of the ghastly shrill noises on the fringes of the #MeToo movement, have steadily started to make me realise that it’s sometimes rather nice to be in the company of just men. For a man who has routinely surrounded himself with women, this is a fairly seismic realisation, but as I’m so often told, everything which is going on at the moment is a pendulum which needs to swing in the other direction before it finds equilibrium, so, until it does, it’s rather nice to spend the odd hour here and there in an all-male environment, if not just to remind myself that we’re not all bad eggs.

I was certainly hugely pleased with the decision to go to the men’s pond with Matt. On a Sunday morning the place is stunningly calm and it is an absolute treat to bob up and down in the cooling, soft water, with 360 degree views of nothing but trees, hillsides and nature around you. Curious birds with long beaks share the water with you, and seem quite happy to swim right up to you as you make your way around the water. Parakeets squawk and fly over head in flashes of bright green. The water levels are obviously incredibly low at the moment. Little railings attached to the jetties, which are there to give respite to a tired swimmer, are plainly meant to be just above the water level, but these days, you have to stretch out of the water to grab one. It was at these ponds, and as a result of the drought, where the terrible accident happened two weeks ago, which everyone there was still discussing on Sunday. I mentioned it in my blog on my birthday. The fact seems to be that a bloke dived off the jetty, in a certain type of dive, which takes you deep and flat. Because of the level of the water, he went low enough to hit the bottom of the pond, and, in the process scraped against a pile of masonry rubble, which, one assumes, was left there when they built, or rebuilt the jetty. He managed to cut his entire stomach open, and was rushed to hospital for major surgery. The good news is that he has now been sent home, no doubt very relieved to be alive.

As a result of the accident, there are now signs up everywhere telling people how to safely dive. Fortunately, I’m not a diver!

I left the ponds wondering how on Earth it could be that I’ve not been there for so long, feeling massively grateful to Matt for reminding me what a stunning place it is.

In Nathan’s absence, I have realised that part of my task is to make sure I see lots of people. I am a fairly natural hermit who will quite happily go underground for days on end. That’s okay when you live with someone because, at the end of the day, they can jolt you back into the land of the living. So, I’ve decided, whilst Nathan is away, that no day must pass without some form of facial contact with someone I know.

Later in the day, I took myself off for lunch with Michael in Soho. We went to my favourite Mediterranean cafe on Berwick Street, which, judging by the sudden price hike, is everyone else’s favourite Mediterranean cafe. Or no-one’s... and is making a last-ditched attempt to make ends meet. It’s a lovely spot. You can sit outside and watch the good folk of Soho parading. Twenty years ago, everyone who passed by would have been a freak, an eccentric, a drug addict, a sex worker or some sort of fabulous club kid. These days they’re mostly tourists. 

From Soho, we went to Jermyn Street, the home of high-end Gentlemen’s fashion. It’s one of those places where you mostly only window shop. Everything is beautiful. Most things are desperately expensive. It’s where you’d go to buy all the things I aspire to wear. Beautiful, felt, button-down braces and bow ties in every colour of the rainbow. Glorious suits. Fabulous Loake shoes. Proper hats. Classic cufflinks. Smoking gowns. Brocade waistcoats. I mean, it’s probably rather good that I don’t have the money to shop there, because I’d end up looking like a tragic extra from a Merchant Ivory film! We can but dream. And what is life, then, but a dream?