Berlin
CHESHUNT
One week, news of a wild swimming spot that isn’t the potentially poisoned one on Hackney Marshes spreads fast among my overlapping pools of acquaintances. It’s just twenty minutes from North London by train, people say; images of a sun-dappled lake with a Dawson’s Creek style jetty appear on the Instagram stories of other people, messages are sent asking: where? I travel there myself, one sunny weekend, and post.
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
On a July weekend my friends rent out a holiday home in Somerset with a hot tub. The villa is like the one in Love Island, in terms of both its layered decking, and areas in which to have chats, though at its heart it is a 17th century farmhouse. The weather is boiling, in that way where part of you knows the rest of the summer will be terrible. I set up a Badminton Net because I hate playing cards, and wish to avoid this fate.
Later, balancing drinks in the Hot Tub, everyone starts talking about the movie Hot Tub Time Machine, which I haven’t seen. We awkwardly spin in the water, creating a whirlpool, because apparently that is how they time travel in it. The next day the Air B n B Host, who lives next door, comes down to the decking to insert some kind of measuring device into the water, apparently to measure its PH levels. Watching her perform this exercise feels more exposing, for the group, than being in the tub the night before.
SKY POOL
A friend goes as a guest to the famed Sky Pool, rolling around in which feels like being on our salary bracket in London always feels – precarious, likely to smash.
PLYMOUTH
I am in Plymouth in the days following a family wedding. The faded Victorian chintz of the hotel room makes me think of the ending of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, where Tess kills Alec – I picture a small speck of red appearing in the ceiling above at any moment; gradually staining outwards. There is an Art Deco Lido right on the sea here, carved out of bleak grey rocks, somewhere I’ve never heard about but feels like a kind of heaven, with its fountain in the middle of a wide pool. There’s so much space to swim.
One night we go to a neon-lit bar called The Walrus where a man in a black shirt sings on stage. Here, there is a small television screen facing the stage which reflects him back, along with a small portion of the dance floor: ghosts with dyed blonde hair doing the twist. And me, holding an Espresso Martini, ingeniously served on tap in this bar. Hello!
LATE AUGUST MONDAY POOL
I go to the public swimming pool in Covent Garden after a late meeting. In the pool I am always too fast for the slow lane and too slow for the middle lane, which feels like a bad metaphor for something. When slow swimmers overtake slow swimmers in the slow lane, time pretty much stops. Today I find five dead wasps floating in the centre of the pool, in a horizontal line, like they’re marking a halfway point. Though, if they marked any point at all, it would only be a quarter of the way. I used to have an exaggerated sense of my own swimming abilities because I thought one stretch of the pool was a Length, but it’s actually two – you have to go back, and forth.
I like the late crowd – less sunbathers and students. It seems, like always, as if everyone knows each other, especially the men. The women keep to themselves more. Actually, someone told me earlier in the summer that this gym and pool is a big cruising spot, sounding incredulous that this wasn’t information I already had in my possession.
I eat a small banana on the bus on the way home that I bought earlier in the day at Pret, which is a stupid place to buy a banana, as everyone knows.
CORNISH CUSTOMS
St. Ives in August feels like Martin Parr’s The Last Resort, in all senses of that phrase. It’s not very hot, just crowded. Still, on my final morning before I catch the train home, there’s something alluring about heading down for a swim from the town, down stone steps, entering the crowded beach, swimming for all of fifteen minutes in the bright blue water, stepping back onto the sand, and walking back up to the hotel. It feels glamorously lonely, like whatever Gwyneth Paltrow gets up to in The Talented Mister Ripley after her beau Tom disappears, swimming in the same sea as the one her husband gets murdered in, which is the part of the movie that you don’t see.
On a previous day, I see a little girl who must be about eight, wading slowly into the water in a black costume with sleeves, wearing two white AirPods and frowning just slightly.
Claire Marie Healy is a writer and editor in London, and a Contributing Editor at AnOther. Website: clairemhealy.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clairemahealy