A reflection on swimming through the pandemic; swimming for much more than the exercise alone …
There must have been other people we knew at the Croydon pool, but I don’t remember them. It was like all that space existed just for the three of us. All January, Mum would be in her spotted bikini, sunbaking with reef oil splashed across her skin, and I’d be in my bright yellow bather bottoms with ties at the sides; my long hair in two messy ponytails and zinc in a stripe across my freckled nose. We’d try to arrive just as the turnstiles opened, then we’d dash across the hot concrete to the patchy grass that skirted the 50-metre pool …