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The second lovely lido swim of the season and I was rewarded with the beautiful clear blue waters of Lake Brockwell. I was also rewarded with a water temperature of 18.5 degrees - or a South London Turkish Bath, as the locals like to call it.

Blue skies over Brockwell Park and the water reflected the rich Naval hue from one end of the art deco pool to the other. Or is it the other way round? Either way, blue is the colour for both sky and lido surrounds.

These four-bricked walls are nothing short of a South London suntrap. I swear that the wisteria creeping it’s way around the poolside decking grew an inch during my afternoon visit. A solar panel on the south facing wall could create enough power to heat the pool. But that’s not really the point…

I delayed the swim whilst I played around with the iPod playlist entitled Lido. This is the soundtrack for the past eighteen summers or so. I can listen to the songs mid-winter and still end up with a lido grin and a glow.

If the previous swim had been all about the acclimatisation, this session was characterised by the lido experience itelf. Swimming is something of a secondary consideration; you arse around poolside with a poncey iPod playlist, procrastinating and allowing the South London rays to thaw out the misery of a cruel winter.

No surprises that I fell asleep.

The towels slowly started to appear along the decking as the afternoon sun descended higher into the Transpontine sky. It wasn’t the great land grab rush that the lido experiences at 9am during the peak of the summer season. You had room to breathe; you had room to cary out a nonsense physio stretch for a knackered knee without creating too much of a social scene.

These are often the best Lido Days. The anticipation of the new season ahead is growing steadily. The confirmed believers of lido life are already poolside, chilled in spirit, if not in body temperature. The part timers will join them as the water temperatures continues to creep up over the next few days.

There’s probably some lido equation that relates to water temperature and turnstile rotations each morning. Bracket in the number of wetsuits on show, and you could come up with a sound business plan for outdoor swimming.

But truth be told, it’s much more simpler than that. There is no such thing as a bad lido experience. Some lost afternoons are just more GRIN inducing than others.

Saturday was all about smiles. After the lido iPod playlist had finally woken me from a winter slumber, I dived straight in at the deep end and didn’t flinch a little finger at 18.5 degrees. The songs continued, with a group of teenage girls huddled in one corner of the water singing snippets of some pop tat just to keep warm.

I soon found my rhythm as I put the lengths in. I attempted to lose the limitations that a poxy 20m indoor pool places on your swimming technique. It’s remarkable how stoke-by-stroke and your sense of lido space soon stacks up with increased precision. I was finding my turning point with spot on timing. Still got it, I murmured to myself as my feet found just the right spot in which to launch another length.

Head rotations for air were alternated, depending on which direction up or down the pool I was traveling. No fancy training reason for this, simply that the late afternoon sun was glinting down from the eastern wall each time I passed. What a charmed life when your only consideration is to position yourself in the water without the disturbance of the sun dazzling through your goggles.

Shadows started to appear around the four walls. Conversations of some eighteen summers past could be heard; memories of the old male changing rooms where the gym now stands were on show, and even an announcement from Dangerous on the poolside PA system.

This is your body telling you that it is probably time to leave the water.

I showered off poolside, and then witnessed another wetsuit boy struggling to free himself of black rubber. Or maybe it was just another Transpontine hallucination?

Golden days.