onionbagblog

For a town that has many dark tales to tell all about black magic, here’s something slightly more uplifting heading our way over the May Fair weekend: Urban Magic by Lee Moss is heading our way, to liven up the streets of the town with some magical performance throughout the Bank Holiday.

Alfie, the finest barber in Wivenhoe, is bringing Lee down to Wivenhoe over the May Fair weekend to try out some of his urban magic skills with the locals. Black Buoy Hill isn’t exactly the urban environment of Brixton, but it will be interesting to see the reaction that Lee is able to achieve.

Lee describes his art as:

“A unique and contemporary twist to magic, leaving even the most sceptical of people picking their jaws up from the floor.”

Which is more or less the scene that you can see at closing time at The Station on any given weekend night.

The last time I was involved in a local card school it involved half a bottle of whiskey, sexual politics and a sore head (and the rest) the following morning.

Ace, etc.

And so fifteen summers of outdoor swimming in South London came to a close for me early on Sunday morning as I bid an emotional farewell to @BrockwellLido. A final creak of the iconic turnstiles, and I exited the cool waters of Lake Brockwell for probably the last time. I didn’t get this tearful after buggering off from Brixton Rec.

The @BrockwellLido close of season coincides this summer with the arrival of the Great Escape. With the lido shutters now pulled firmly shut, the bag packing can start in earnest as I seek to find a new outdoor swimming experience somewhere deep within the wilds of North Essex.

When @AnnaJCowen and I sat down some eighteen months ago to compile a list of Reasons to Stay in London, my plus column consisted of a solitary entry: Brockwell Lido. Cricket almost got a look in, as did track cycling at Herne Hill. Replacing cricket is relative; I’m too crocked now to compete seriously at le velo.

It was the absolute love of @BrockwellLido that *almost* kept me in South London. You can’t survive on the last of the summer wine forever, and a lido lifestyle can be a miserable ball and chain to be shackled with during those dark winter months.

But how to say goodbye to an activity that has been at the centre of my South London #hyperlocal universe for the past fifteen summers?

My love affair with the lido started almost as soon as we first moved into South London during the summer of ’95. I kept on hearing about this mythical outdoor pool during my first few weeks in Brixton. A weekend run around Brockwell Park led me to the formal introduction. We’ve had an intimate relationship ever since.

The start of May until the end of September have been put aside for the past fifteen years as Lido Days. It is an addiction that means my working day is not complete unless I have indulged. Breaking the Brockwell habit is going to come at a high cost.

The attraction is mainly physical, partly emotional. I embrace the freshness of the water washing over me each morning in an almost ritualistic manner, providing clarity and perspective for the working day ahead.

The lido has become my thinking place in South London. Most of my major life decisions have been made here in an environment where I am truly clear of any outside distraction or influence. Ironically, the decision to leave South London was made whilst under the cool waters of Lake Brockwell.

Starting your morning with a gentile introduction, albeit a rather physically brutal and mentally bruising experience, leaves you with positive thoughts that remain throughout the day. Colleagues have long since stopped asking me why I am grinning insanely at 9am.

Catching the dancing rays of the sun as they reflect down on to the pool basin is better than any sterile, soulless Brixton Rec indoor swimming experience. Seeing a flock of geese provide you with a personal flyover is an added bonus.

The lido is MY lido. This is a claim that every other lido swimmer would also no doubt make. It can also be yours if you choose it to be. The experience and routine of the daily dip becomes a highly personalised one. You are in complete control of your own immediate environment. No one can touch you [um, not quite true] and anything is achievable.

I feel that I know every physical feature of the pool, from where the uneven white edges around the perimeter start to crack, down to the gradual tethering of the shallow end and the exact spot where you need to raise your knees to prevent grazing on the pool basin.

I can judge with my eyes closed (and usually they are) the precise point where my feet need to make contact as I push off from the deep end as I turn around to do it all again. I swim blind - not in the literal sense, although the pool is home to a number of sight-impaired swimmers.

I have seen many weird and wonderful sights down by the waters of Lake Brockwell over the years. The bonkers underwater hoover, the official Hold Yer Breath Underwater National Championships, and even having to share my lido experience with some model submarines that tried to dive bomb me in the deep end. That’s not something you see every day down at Brixton Rec.

But perhaps the weirdest experience is that of my fellow lido swimmers. All lovely, all totally bonkers. It is the defining feature of someone who chooses to swim outdoors in a water temperature that your body wants to resist, but your mind wants you to indulge in.

My favourite lido moments are the extremes - falling asleep in the suntrap terrace on a South London scorcher of an afternoon, or swimming in the rain mid-September and being the single custodian of the waters of Lake Brockwell. The mid-winter Brockwell Icicles experience takes this crazed approach to aquatic hedonism a stage further.

The building itself may change, but the ambience remains. I was alarmed over the architectural vandalism that the winter 2006 re-build by Fusion proposed. The demolition of an art deco wall, and then replacing it with a full on body pump style gym, could have killed off Brockwell Lido for me.

Somehow the smoke and mirrors trick has managed to hide away the dirty business of the gym bunnies. What goes on behind that wall we don’t talk about, but at least it brings in the money for Fusion, and guarantees a future for the lido.

Remarkably the unique lido ambience is still more or less in place after the most significant building works in the pool’s seventy-year history. This is a place of community, a place to meet people and a place to escape the nearby madness of the city.

It is this companionship that I treasure the most. Seeing fellow swimmers for the first time in the season is always a diary date to look forward to. Saying farewell at the end of September only reminds you of the winter misery months to come. I confess to slipping out quietly on Sunday, not wanting to cause a scene, not wanting to blubber on my final Brockwell Lido day.

And so where to now? Nearby Colchester has the new Garrison pool (fitness swimming) and Leisure World (wave machine hell.) I’m hoping to continue the outdoor aquatic lifestyle, by finding my own personal space downstream in the Colne estuary.

Perhaps this will be the biggest personal legacy that @BrockwellLido leaves upon me. Outdoor swimming is the purest form in which to participate. But to participate effectively, you need companionship. The unique collision of an art deco building in South London with a collective of crazed outdoor aquatic types, is going to be simply irreplaceable.

I regret that I am not going to be around for the BLU AGM next month. It is a social highlight of the lido season, and provides me with my annual opportunity to ask why I should have to pay twice to swim in pools owned by @lambeth_council. Fifteen years of swimming, and I still haven’t heard a satisfactory answer.

But anyway: come on in - the water’s… Brrrrr.

Early Sunday morning and @BrockwellLido was bloody closed - again. After the run of five closures during the balmy days of June, I thought Fusion had finally understood how to manage an outdoor swimming pool.

Only yesterday and I was commenting to the lovely Lido Peter how the clear, blue waters of Lake Brockwell have returned, just in time for the season close at the end of September. Sunday morning however had the familiar “chemical imbalance” given as the reason for the lack of aquatic action.

Bugger.

To be fair to Fusion, all members have been offered a 10% discount on the joining fee for the 2011 season. Cynics might say that this serves only as an incentive to sign up yet again. What’s the point if you’re buggering off @BrockwellLido continues to suffer the same fate next summer?

Having dragged my backside down to Brockwell Park early on Sunday morning, the inconvenience for me was more of a personal and emotional disappointment.

The tally chart counting down my final days of outdoor swimming in SE24 is almost in single digits. A closed pool is about as welcome as a LambethLabour pledge of “free swimming for every resident” right now.

Ah yes - about that pre-election promise of “free swimming for every resident…”

In the absence of any @BrockwellLido action, I returned down Railton Road and found myself staring into the abyss of Brixton Rec.

Blimey.

The queue at reception finally cleared after five minutes - this was 9am on a Sunday morning, after all. Ahead of me to be served was a young mother with three small kids. She asked for an adult swimming ticket, and three passes for the free swimming for her children.

“Sorry,” said the GLL receptionist. “Free swimming is no longer available.” A price was quoted, which didn’t leave much change out of a £20 note. Not surprisingly the young mother had to explain to her three small kids that swimming wasn’t going to happen today.

I paid my £3.50, and then walked past the petition on the wall set up by the Brixton Rec Users Group. It calls for @LambethLabour to reconsider its decision to slash free swimming for under 16′s and over 60′s. The election pledge of “free swimming for every resident” has long since been sacrificed.

I’m told that just over 2,000 signatures have so far been collected by local leisure users - quite an achievement. One thousand more are still required for the Rec Users Group to force the next Full Council meeting to actually take the petition seriously and debate the matter.

That Lambeth Life Power to the People twaddle of a headline is looking more false as the @LambethLabour cuts start to kick in.

With the disappointment of Brockwell behind me, and now ready to experience the delights of Brixton Rec on a Sunday morning, I showered and slipped into the pool. Five minutes later and I was finished.

It was simply impossible to undertake any form of exercise in a public pool that is rammed bumper to bumper with swimmers early on a Sunday morning. That’s what happens when the “success story” of leisure in Lambeth leads to only one pool that is actually open in the entire borough.

I’ll be back at the waters of Lake Brockwell come Monday morning. If the “chemical imbalance” is still lingering, I’ll have to admit defeat and accept that the buggers have won.

“Free swimming for every resident?”

Only in the Rotten Borough…

I’m starting to sound like Margaret Thatcher after being turfed out of No. 10, but yep - we’re leaving the place we have called home for the past fifteen years, probably for the final time.

I arrived in Brixton back in the summer of 1995, full of hope, high on optimism and with a huge appetite for ambition. None of these have been played out to their full potential, but I feel that I am leaving London as an all round better person.

I’ve been enlightened, enriched and inspired by London. But it comes at a high price, both financially and physically. London demands everything of you. There’s no hiding away if you want to experience the benefits that this city has to offer - you’re either in or you’re out.

I want out.

After fifteen years of running around town, it’s time to come up for some air. We both need a break, and one that allows us to put our feet up, laze around in the garden with a bottle of bolly and just generally live a slower pace of life.

Plus if truth be told, the tipping point came last summer when South London Yoof decided to camp out on my newly varnished front garden fence. It wasn’t particularly anti-social behaviour, but then neither was my response of blasting out some Billy Bragg from my front bedroom to shift South London Yoof along.

I just want a bit of peace, space and respect, bruv. I can’t find that in Sunny Stockwell any more. I live in fear of becoming what I despise - a right wing bigot, albeit with some sense of justification, given the actions of those around me in my current surroundings.

We have lived in the city for fifteen years because we wanted to. We wanted the convenience of being close to the cultural capital of the world; we wanted the opportunities that living in such a densely populated environment presented, and most of all, we wanted to be part of something that was much greater than we as individuals could ever be. London allowed us to live this lifestyle.

But that period in our lives is now in the past. We’re both ready for the next phase, searching for more solitude and a less frantic lifestyle - and yeah, one which probably involves keeping a well stocked wine cellar and not feeling guilty about procrastinating and enjoying life for itself, rather than with a specific reason to achieve or obtain career fulfillment.

I’m failing to find the love that I once had for this great city. Weekends of hunting down specific events or meetings are long gone. The enthusiasm for anything outside of my micro #hyperlocal patch of South London is non-existent. I’m even struggling to see anything of interest for me around here locally. A man who is bored of London is bored of life. I need to therefore try and find a new life out in the wilds.

I’m giving up pretty much everything that has been my social existence for a third of my life: the korfball club, watching cricket, the cycling community at Herne Hill and of course the lovely lido (although if truth be told, it’s not been a great season down in SE24.)

I feel that I’ve run my course with each activity. With no physical or geographical work restrictions keeping me in place, it’s time to move on. I am a nomad of technology: have broadband (just) will travel.

And so where to next? Well, we’re going back to the future to find a familiar lifestyle of old. Almost twenty years ago to the day, @AnnaJCowen and I first met as undergraduates at the University of Essex in Colchester. We’re now heading back to North Essex / Suffolk border, just up the road from the campus to the quayside town of Wivenhoe.

When we lived in North Essex, we couldn’t wait to leave for London. Weekends were spent going back and forth to Liverpool Street. It now seems that we have come full circle, and we can’t get wait to get back to the Wivenhoe rural way of life.

The city has served me well, but I can no longer keep up. I need an environment that hopefully will begin a new period of discovery. Yep - I’m becoming a hippy.

There’s a cycling club, estuary swimming, county cricket in nearby Castle Park, a sailing club and a jazz club. I think I’ll be busy, in a more laid back, middle-aged sort of way. Plus Wivenhoe is Constable country. I don’t think I’m going to take up landscape painting, but think of all those wonderful wildlife photographic opportunities.

That purveyor of objectivity and truth, um, the urban dictionary, rather helpfully adds:

“[Wivenhoe ] Small town in North East Essex. The town is home to an abnormally high percentage of musicians, artists, actors, and assorted TV and media people. The University of Essex at the top of the town is famous as a Communist stronghold in the 1960′s - the town also was home to The Angry Brigade at that time.

The Wivenhoe Folk Club is recognised as one of the best in the country, and regularly attracts big name acts. Other Essex villages consider Wivenhoe to be full of drunks, layabouts, hippies, arty-farty types, Pot-Heads, gays, and prozac-dependants. Small wonder then, that it was recently rated as the second most popular place to live in the whole of the UK.”

Blimey.

We’ve bought an old Victorian cottage with views out across the North Essex estuary. We’re keeping our properties down here in South London, still doing the landlord and tenant nonsense. Needs must. Plus you never know when you might miss the mean streets of Sunny Stockwell and long for a return.

Or maybe not.

As for m’blog? Well, it never really was about South London per se - more about my life in South London. The Wivenhoe lifestyle will undoubtedly present many new opportunities, and I’ll probably end up blogging all about these.

The countdown to the North Essex coastal adventure started in earnest some eighteen months ago when the plan was first hatched. We’re now approaching the Sunny Stockwell end game, with all the final arrangements being put in place.

Many, many thanks to everyone who has helped to make our London life so special. The memories will remain (um, online…) as we reach out to create new ones.

London loves, the misery of a speeding heart.

Time for the Great Escape.

The political hot potato that is privatised public swimming continues to rumble on. Whilst we’re still waiting for the roll out of the @LambethLabour election manifesto pledge of “free swimming for every resident,” our Red Flag flying friends in the Rotten Borough have now pulled free swimming for under 16′s and over 60′s.

Ah - but have they? Not on my watch etc, and it is of course those nasty ConDems who have been doing the cutting, according to the Comrades @LambethLabour. Using this logic, and your entire election manifesto might as well have been written on the back of a fag packet, with the handy opt out cause of blaming the bigger Westminster political picture whenever you get your kickers in a twist over the calculations locally.

Cripes.

But swimming is still a public service that resonates with many. There’s votes out there in those swimming lanes, doncta know. Right of centre politicians, be they ConDems or @LambethLabour, know this all too well. This is the political logic behind the passing the buck policy of #bigsociety and #lambethcoop.

But could swimming actually be left to the Little People to run? Patrick Butler has posted up an excellent blog post over at Guardian Society, examining specifically what is required for the pubic to take over the management of a local authority owned pool.

The sales pitch for #lambethcoop states that everything is up for grabs - housing, education, swimming. It’s the great Rotten Borough give away - the buggers will give to the Little People, and then bugger off until polling day comes around once again.

Butler makes the worthy point that the public management of swimming pools will probably only work in middle class suburbs where the locals have the time, knowledge and political capital to make such a proposition happen. The only collective spirit you’ll find at Brixton Rec is the continued moaning over the state of the changing rooms, the queues at reception or the over crowding of the pool.

The advice offered by Butler to any Speedo clad civic minded swimmer is to get support from the local authority:

“The state and its agencies still matter: big society swimming pools don’t survive in an infrastructure support-free zone.”

Too true here in Lambeth. Streatham is propped up (and closed) with support from the corporate paymaster of Tesco. Clap’ham is propped up (and running two years plus behind schedule) thanks to the Cathedral Group’s mismanagement of private capital.

I often think that we have reached the nadir of leisure provision here in Lambeth. It was looking bleak when Streatham closed last year. Clap’ham soon followed, and then in the same month, Brixton operated the bonkers 7am - 9am only swimming policy.

With only one leisure centre now remaining in the Rotten Borough, and ALL free swimming removed, the plug has all but been pulled from the public provision of leisure in Lambeth.

Maybe it is this absolute rock bottom that might just kick start the Little People to fight back and actually consider running the facilities collectively? Offering an inferior service than that currently provided by @LambethLabour isn’t possible.

But then this would be the reaction that the Comrades at the Town Hall would no doubt see as an endorsement of the PR farce that is #lambethcoop. The reality would be the exact opposite - collective action against the inability of the local authority to provide a service, rather than a co-operative partnership working in support of the local council.

Either way, it still represents a failure of the right wing privatisation of leisure in Lambeth by @LambethLabour, and the long-term consequences that this will leave for years within the Rotten Borough.