LONDON NEWS

TUPNews recently visited Brockwell Park Lido, in South London. I will never tire of telling people that Brockwell Park Lido is simply one of the best things about the London summer.

Last Friday was cloudless and hot, so I rang work and pretended to be incapacitated by a duff oyster. After a little lie-in, I whipped on my trunks, grabbed a towel and packed my bag with the essentials: music player and headphones, a selection of light reading, and a bottle of mineral water.

On the way to Brockwell Park, I stopped off at the market on North Cross Road market to buy some of stallholder Andrea’s fishcakes for lunch, and then at East Dulwich Sainsbury’s, which was selling Amber Solaire spray-on sunscreen for six quid; a fucking result in any language. I got the lido around one o’clock.

There’s a great ambience at the pool, as always. We all roll our towels out onto the London concrete and pretend we’re in Spain, or Morocco, or Egypt. Police sirens sound at a distance, planes circle overhead, but we’re in a little secret patch of our own: it’s lovely.

The near-nakedness of everyone is also pleasantly relaxing: Londoners of all shapes, shades and sizes, sans class signifiers save some tattoos, letting it all hang out. The first half hour I devote to checking out pretty young things, but soon this impulse fades and I just dig the naturalist, garden-of-Eden vibe.

The pool is Olympic-sized and ice-cold, which means it rarely feels crowded. You get the odd point-to-point lap swimmer, but I’m more of a five-minute dip man. I specialise in the underwater somersault and the lying on my back with my feet sticking out of the water. Me and the lap-swimmers don’t get in each others’ way too much.

These little dips have a remarkable effect on me. Within seconds of being in the water, I feel as though all of the stress of city life – which in my view is amplified in the sticky-suited heat of the summer – is discharged into the water, like static charge grounded. I dry out in the sun, and then repeat: after two or three of these dips, I am as relaxed and restored as I would be after a week’s vacation.

I have a small but persistent hangover from last night’s band practice, I’m hungry, and I find my reading matter doesn’t quite match the mood (last summer was all Murakami and Blondie’s Parallel Lines, absolutely perfect for the pool). Also I’m a little bummed out by a text from Emeline, a gorgeous French girl I’d met last weekend, cancelling our date that night. So after a couple of hours in the sun, I hit the road.

On the way back I stopped off at Nicolas, my local wine store, for a few bottles of Corsican rose to drink during the next day’s England vs Portugal World Cup quarterfinal. In France, there is a Nicolas on every corner; in England, around forty stores, all in Greater London, all staffed by French nationals. I think they may be posted out here from France. This Nicolas was displaying a large flag of St. George in the window.

“Ne pas un tricolore?” I inquired. “No,” the French national responded gloomily, “I zink zere is more hope with zis flag.”

Alors!!