A frosty start to Friday morning down in Sunny Stockwell.
I layered up with a vest, a shirt, a tank top and a crombie overcoat ahead of the lovely lido adventure to come.
Oh - and a cravat.
Always a cravat, Comrades.
Some bloke on a bicycle was riding up South Lambeth Road at 7:30am, blasting out I Feel Love from a bass heavy speaker balanced on his handlebars.
Chapeau!
South London bicyclists really are the best.
I made my way through Brixton and on to Lake Brockwell. The water temperature had dropped to 3.4 degrees overnight.
This is the lowest that I have ever experienced outdoors. It is also my first season of winter swimming without being incased in black rubber.
Oh fuckety fuck.
Or even fiddlesticks.
Friday was a morning for heroes and fools.
Or possibly both.
My swimming sum of [water temperature = number of lengths] was slightly out of sync.
I hate swimming in odd numbers of lengths, and so I soldiered on for a brave four.
The water was absolutely fine - honest.
It’s just the complete meltdown that you have, as soon as you haul your body out of the chilled waters of Lake Brockwell.
I fell over instantly, realising that I was in trouble.
A morning for heroes and fools…
I had no plans for the sauna, with a school day in SE17 beckoning.
But whatever was left of my internal logic somehow triggered my feet to move to the poolside sauna - and pretty sharpish as well.
I let out a HOWL as my only form of communication.
This soon advanced to allow FUCK to enter my vocabulary. I held down a quite detailed conversation with some other Icicles, based around the solitary word of FUCK.
I think that we all understood one another.
I managed to recuperate sufficiently to get showered, and then cycle off back through Brixton and Camberwell, and on to the Walworth Road for an SE17 school day.
I walked straight into some Year 1 Indian dancing. I had no reservations about joining in , such was my state of lido SKY HIGH euphoria.
This was then followed with some Nursery yoga and a Year 3 assembly involving reindeers.
How was your working day?
I helped out a little with the ACE Burnet News Club. It’s basically an online / offline project training Y6 students up to become journos.
The SE17 kids have mastered words and pics. They are now keen to work with video and audio.
Fast learners…
The main site is built around WordPress.
Isn’t the entire modern interweb built around WordPress these days?
There’s some restrictions though on embedding media files natively - which is a bit of a pain.
But we’re getting there…
Boy Y took an interest in my neckwear during luncheon:
“What’s that around your neck?”
My aim for the remainder of the term is to teach Boy Y about the stylistic merits of wearing a cravat in a South London school.
In Fitted Cupboard News: the quotes came in for the fitted cupboards in the flat.
Ouch.
It’s only taken us three years to completely refurbish the flat. But we’re getting there…
I disappeared off to Stratford early evening for some ball game action. London Lions welcomed the Glasgow Rocks to the Copper Box.
The son of an old school pal was playing for the Rocks. Sadly the old school pal was on the other side of the world.
It was a decent ball game, with the Lions securing the win with only 8 seconds remaining on the clock.
I also used the opportunity of hitching a lift on the Copper Box ACE WiFi to release a couple of school videos out into the great wide open.
Back to Lake Brockwell in the morning.
Fuckety, fuckety fuck.