Category Archives: Books

A few Swimmoirs (swimming memoirs) I love

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Prairie Dolphin has been on sabbatical—still swimming, just not chronicling it on the blog these days for reasons below. I am thrilled the lion’s mane jellyfish and fair-weather swimming crowds eventually cleared off for the season after an unusually long residency, and we winter mermaids and mermen have the deliciously cold water to ourselves since mid October. I have had many glorious swims over the year starting with a blustery, very low tide, swampy Ferry Point swim down in Youghal on New Year’s Day (the sea looked like a shallow bowl of pea green soup) to last week’s refreshing Wednesday dip in Sandycove with the air cooler than the water–the water temperature not yet under 10 degrees. A fellow swimmer said to me, “It’s cheaper than psychoanalysis.” I laughed, and she said, “I said that to another woman one day swimming here and she said, ‘I am a psychoanalyst!’. And so I told her, You should tell your clients to come here for a session!”

Highlights of the year include training my little ones to be seadogs too; seeing them frolicking and braving the bracing Irish Sea in our summer holidays was a delight of a lifetime for me. My daughter shows signs of loving the masochistic cold water, charging the waves in the surf with a throaty war cry and retreating in delighted terror while my boy likes to flirt briefly with the whitecaps and his torso and then surrender promptly to dry land—hopefully next year he’ll feel the call more. After I finished writing Cadillac Couches a book about some big loves, namely music, I started my second novel In the Swim, which is also about some big loves, swimming and reading. I feel the same way about swimming as I do about music, an overwhelmingly goofy desire to express my love for it (not that it needs it) battling with words and never quite scratching the itch and needing to proselytize some more (I gotta do something with all this love otherwise I’m gonna burst.) Prairie Dolphin has been a wonderful incubator for In the Swim. So these days I save up all of my aqua thoughts for the novel in progress. In the meantime here’s a little marine content for the thalassophiles out there: a sample of my favourite swimming non-fiction. Please feel free to read in bits. I may not update for awhile and it’s a biggie. 1454159Waterlog by Roger Deakin, published by Vintage Books The bible of wild swimming. Inspired by John Cheever’s story The Swimmer, Deakin set out to swim his way around Britain, in every pond, river, lake, lido, fen, dyke, quarry and cove he could, in the manner of The Swimmer‘s protagonist who swims in all the swimming pools across Westchester County, NY, on his way home. Deakin logs his waterlogged adventures in gorgeous prose.

Deakin, like me, swims not as much for athletic reasons, but for spiritual ones. He evangelizes about aimless swimming; the whole point is to have no point. Alongside his Buddhist approach to swimming, he charts the history of the crawl and our modern swimming styles, and for me most importantly he tackles the notion that swimming in the wild is super risky. Not so long ago in this part of the world, people swam in rivers and ponds and viaducts all the time and even up and down the Thames. But now there are so many danger warnings signs and talk of rat-induced Weil’s disease that it’s ingrained in most of us, that most water sources are off-limits because of various aqua bogeymen. He analyzes the statistics on Weil’s disease and finds that swimming doesn’t pose much of a risk at all in this regard. He shimmies under fences and warning signs to gain access to many forbidden former swimming holes, reclaiming humans’ rights and thundering desires to swim. Waterlog is a call to arms for a “swimmer’s right to roam”.

Another radical notion for me is that Deakin’s love of water includes its creepy crawly companions. While I like to pretend there is nothing but me in the water, his championing of all creatures great and small challenges head on my squeamishness of all things floaty in the water near me. He doesn’t just want turquoise warm waters and sesame seed sandbeds, he relishes swims in shallow, Guinness-brown rivers, hoping to encounter eels. Eels for heaven’s sakes… Rhapsodizing, he describes swimming in the moat outside of his cottage in all seasons and admires the changing landscapes outside and inside the water—from the moorhen ducking under, to the toads’ chorus pondside, to dozens of newts canoodling just below the surface. He relishes slippery silty underfoot. He finds it all sensual. He convinces me not to be a swim prude or nervous nelly in the water and to embrace the wonders of life starting with cattails and water boatmen. And afterwards there is nothing better than a blazing hot steaming bath and cup of tea.

Deakin quadrupled my water vocabulary with exotic words like naiads, tarn, tufa, fen and his friend’s made-up one, endolphins. He is undoubtedly my swimming guru. I would have loved to have met him but sadly he had a brain tumour and passed away far too young. Waterlog has since become a classic of the nature writing canon.

Here’s Waterlog’s opening paragraph that made my socks roll up and down.

“The warm rain tumbled down from the gutter in one of those midsummer downpours as I hastened across the lawn behind my house in Suffolk and took shelter in the moat. Breast-stroking up and down the thirty yards of clear, green water, I nosed along, eyes just at water level. The frog’s eye view of rain on the moat was magnificent. Rain calms water, it freshens it, sinks all the floating pollen, dead bumblebees and other flotsam. Each raindrop exploded in a momentary, bouncing fountain that turned into a bubble and burst. The best moments were when the storm intensified, drowning birdsong, and a haze rose off the water as though the moat itself were rising to meet the lowering sky. Then the rain eased and the reflected heavens were full of tiny dancers: water sprites springing up on tiptoe like bright pins over the surface. It was raining water sprites.” Hallelujah! I love his frog’s eye view. This Pisces bows to the master. 9781846144950   Swimming Studies by fellow Canadian Leanne Shapton and published by Blue Rider Press offers a grand intersection of art and exercise, a memoir on the art of doing laps and the aesthetics of a watery life. A former competitive swimmer and Canadian Olympic hopeful, Shapton is an artist, novelist and publisher in New York. Shapton’s memoir of a life in laps includes charming illustrations of swimming pools, paintings of swimmers and a photographic archive of swimsuits worn. Shapton takes us on a swimmer’s wishlist of destinations from Switzerland to St. Barts.

I’m more of a bather than a swimmer. I like to freestyle, to frolic, to somersault randomly and pretend to be a seal. I prefer open water. I like pools too, just not as much. Shapton, on the other hand, as a trained swimmer, is used to four sides and a bottom and is nervous in the sea without that clarity. When I was in high school, I admired friends like Shapton who had the discipline to hit the pool for hours every day at terrible times of the morning, week in week out. There is romance in those Tim Hortons’-coffee fueled, early morning training sessions in the middle of a harsh Canadian winter. “Ever present is the smell of chlorine and the drifting of snow in the dark.” I imagine too, that training discipline learned young, offers what HR people refer to as a seriously transferable skill. I enjoyed reading her account of the training regimes of serious swimmers and the subculture of her watery colleagues, and her goggle advice.

Shapton chronicles her life lived so far in various swimsuits (she gives us 26 photographs of swimsuits on a headless mannequin and tells us when and where she swum in them). These mini stories offer charming poetic details, like how she wore a suit to a pool in Paris and then cycle-dried on the way back to her hotel on her Vélib bicycle because she forgot her towel. How the sea tasted like “thin chicken stock from a stainless steel bow.” We meet swimsuits she has worn in Reykjavik, in New York, one she has stolen from the Banff Hot Springs, one from swimming in Olympic trials in 1992.

Where Shapton studiously analyzes Jaws and its subtexts of the carnality of sex, I studiously avoided watching it. She explains that Jaws the movie is about man versus monster while Jaws the book is about marriage and the shark is a metaphor for infidelity. Shapton tells us that her husband asks her why she is so obsessed and frightened by sharks. She does some nifty psychoanalysis and reckons that sharks represent the unknown, the darkness just below the surface, violence, loneliness—her own vulnerability in other words. I love some good psychoanalysis, I do, but I think the reason for the obsession could also be having scrutinized that movie in the first place—multiple viewings of Jaws is kind of bound to give you the fear I would think. In order for me to unafraid of the oceans I have swum in, I need to not think of sharks and their ilk at all. I have swum in the middle of the ocean off the west coast of Mexico, the Caribbean, the English Channel, the Med, lake Uganda, Crater Lake, and the Irish Sea. See no danger, feel no danger. I love the story my friend Saman told me that Luc Besson made The Big Blue to make up for the damage Spielberg did in creating Jaws, a whole generation of swimmers terrified to get in the water. The Big Blue features an unbelievably beautiful man who free dives in the stunning Mediterranean and keeps pictures of his dolphin friends/family in his wallet. He is an improbable virgin, but nonetheless you go with it for the sheer stunning cinematography of the water and him in it, the drops on his eyelashes and Jean Reno too. While Jaws is all gore and terror of the sea and its creatures, The Big Blue is all rhapsodizing wonder and beauty.

Along with Sheila Heiti and Heidi Julavits, Shapton has a new book out these days called Women in Clothes published by Blue Rider Press.

PS I have read recently that sharks, like rats, are largely misrepresented. The incidence of sharks attacking humans is still quite rare statistically. There’s a young woman Madison Stewart who is trying to change their image. (I’ve been assured there are only basking sharks in Ireland.) 17322943   Pondlife published by Bloomsbury is a poignant meditation on aging and swimming written by Al Alavarez, the famous poet, literary critic, anthologist and editor who championed Sylvia Plath in London in the late fifties early sixties. (My father as young PhD student from Brighton knocked on his door in the 60s to chat about Norman Mailer—Dad says Alvarez was very affable). Alvarez was a rugged mountain man and poker player, a Hemingway type, macho and literary. Now he is a guy who is seriously on his last, wobbly legs, barely, who prefers being horizontal to vertical.*

Like Deakin’s, his book is a log, a daily journal entry of his swims in the Hampstead Heath ponds from 2002-2011. He gives us the temperature, the context and story of the swim and how it felt. Alvarez has been swimming for over 70 years at the Hampstead Heath ponds. Pondlife is inspiring my older character in the In the Swim. He is unflinching in his description of ageing and of the betrayal of his body parts letting him down. He also gave me a big desire to go swim in the famous London ponds at Hampstead Heath (I’m no longer worried about duck poop thanks to Deakin and Alvarez). Like Smiley in John LeCarré’s Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, Alvarez goes swimming most mornings of the week—you can see Gary Oldman paddle away in the movie version.

The infirmer he becomes the more effort it costs Alvarez to get his much-needed tonic. He hobbles day after day to the water on his arthritic legs and dodgy ankle no matter how grey and miserable the day. But he always comes away anew. The colder the water, the bigger the rush. He also thrives on the camaraderie of the regular swimmers. He is in huge pain mostly from an old ankle injury. He is a guy that used to climb mountains and now has been felled by merciless ageing. He writes that he desperately misses his old self. Swimming represents everything good to him and he feels reborn after each dip. The whole struggle is worth it for these moments of transcendence. As a fellow water worshipper I could relate.

It was illuminating to read a sweary older guy revealing the true story of getting older, no sugar coating. And also inspiring to see the magic of cold water swimming so very obviously healing and nourishing someone well into their decrepitude. Whenever people express amazement that I swim in the winter, I always tell them, it’s full of older people! If they can do it, surely so can we. But the truth is only some of us are drawn to it and love it. For us that do it is fun to experience the shock and try to articulate the nuances of cold: burning armpits, angry crotch… It doesn’t make sense for other people to do cold-water swimming if they don’t feel the call (you need to like it); hopefully they have their own version of the sublime at the ready.

“And I am falling apart. I swallow a painkiller every day but all it seems to do is dumb me down. My ankle aches, becoming more unsteady and treacherous each day; the slightest irregularity makes it give way and lands me in the mud. My back aches and my legs go numb, freeze up and cease to work; my eyesight is poor; my sense of balance is shot… I toil up every incline as though it was steep scree. *Thank God for horizontality and its three Ss, swimming, sex and sleep.”

Ten days later he has two falls. Three days after that he declares in his journal he is back at last! Such is his relief to be horizontal again in the water. He had intended to go the previous day but the first winter snow made him relent. This is all in between writing long articles for the New York Review of Books and editing manuscripts.

In his acknowledgments he thanks the lifeguards who work the Hampstead ponds for keeping him alive and if not still kicking, at least, still swimming. They help get him in the water even after he’s had a stroke and has a dead leg. They get a special dispensation to drive on the Heath to the water’s edge to deliver him to his merciful dip and then they help getting him dressed in the middle of winter. I hope today he’s still getting his fix!

I also enjoyed  his opening epigraph from Tallulah Bankhead: They don’t make mirrors like they used to. 9214995   The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch and published by Hawthorne Books is intense and sometimes shocking, but always a powerful and engaging memoir of a life lived in the pool. Yuknavitch flees a troubled home life with a swimming scholarship and then messes up her Olympian chances with addictions to booze and drugs. The intensity of her honesty and her visceral use of language to tell her story of chlorine and vodka and a lost baby makes for a white-knuckle reading experience. Sometimes I wanted to look away, like when I was reading how she got incredibly high before attempting her first major whitewater kayak expedition… The unflinching, foul-languaged, self-harming extravaganza felt almost too much. But the beauty of her writing pulled me back in. Glad I read it.

Alongside her swimming and growing up journeys is her training as a writer, being mentored by Ken Kesey and her PhD in English literature. There definitely strikes me as something edgy, tough, and true about the Oregonian writers I have read so far. Yuknavitch was in a writing workshop with Chuck Palahniuk and Cheryl Strayed—I can imagine the fireworks. Like with Shapton I could get into Yuknavitch’s Zen groove of doing laps, doing laps, doing laps, and then more laps. The repetition soothing, calming, the quiet underwater, the chlorine… Swimming is the therapeutic backdrop for life.

Both Shapton and Yuknavitch had been competitive swimmers. Contenders. Both flee it and find themselves returning to the laps for the soothing sake of doing laps. Amen.

PS I have had this book for a good few years and never noticed until now that there is big boob on the cover! It was tragically hidden underneath a glued-on flap (modesty cover) that I only thought to pull off after seeing the real cover online… If you click on the cover you can see the modesty flap in action.

Yesterday I went for a run in Sandycove and as usual by the sea I noticed people sitting on benches by themselves just staring out to sea in the middle of a normal weekday. Watergazers Mellville called us. Us humans are so drawn to the beautiful spectacle of water. When I get a little hostile from stress, my husband inquires gently, “When are you going swimming again, darling?”

For great waterlove quotes there is nothing to top Melville’s Moby Dick.

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet…then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball…. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip… What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries…”

In recent swim fiction I enjoyed Samantha Warwick’s Sage Island and I’m really looking forward to reading Angie Abdou’s The Bone Cage.

From a winningly titled new album Swimmin’ Time here’s a video from a band my brother recently recommended.

Swimmingly yours,

Sophie b

Any swim book recommendations?

Prairie Dolphin Goes Mano-a-mano with Jellyfish and Other Tales of the Summer

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Mid July there was at last some heat! Real, proper summer heat. It was a gorgeous sunny morning, two hours from low tide. I drove myself to Forty Foot as soon as I was free. I had been especially wired lately and needing thalassotherapy more than ever.

Getting there, the first thing I saw was one of the regular old-timers actually holding a real live jellyfish in his bare hands! Seconds later he lobbed it casually off into the wildflowerbed at the mezzanine level of the Forty Foot.

Meanwhile a woman and her daughter heading towards the cars post-swim told me there were loads of jellyfish but they were no problem. I must have looked nervous because the daughter who looked ten-ish reassured me again, “they’re fine!”

Lots of swimmers were coming out of the water faster than usual.

I got changed beside one of the regular women who told me in her thick Slavic accent that her heels were getting stung and that they were down below at heel level. I headed down the ladder and realized they weren’t down below anymore, they were floating very close to the surface.

There were no swimmers in the water now. Looking back to the changers I saw older, cuddlier women (my friend’s euphemism for chubbier), getting dried up, their tyres of loose wobbly flesh on display. Waves of flesh. Waves of water. It was good for morale and somehow comforting to see all this uncensored, matronly, dough-like flesh.

My desire to get in was almost equal to my fear of jellyfish. I could see dozens of them. Normally I would say there were thousands, but I’m trying to rein in my hyperbolic tendencies for wild exaggeration.

Let’s just say there were tons of them, what were they all doing here?

The Baba with stung heels must have realized she’d put me off because she came to over to tell me it was okay to get in the water. There were gaps of water in between the jellyfish after all.

Stuck on the ladder, I was seriously desperate to get in. It was hot. I was stressed. Relief was in front of me. Devouring Cheryl Strayed’s Wild that week I had been seriously inspired to up my can-do. Strayed had reminded me of the beauty of intense physical exertion. And not to be a wimp-ass. Hot and bothered and the perfect antidote was before me, how could I do not do it? I knew they were probably harmless, but I’ve never got in with so many so visible. Should I stay or should I go? Being in my swimsuit with my bathing cap and boots on was a big motivation. It would be too disappointing to not accomplish my mission and have to get all the gear off for nuffin, like Mancub says in his toddler-cockney.

Plus, having small children, I’m trying to get over my own squeamishness involving insects and other boogeymen, etc to set a mighty example. It’s good to feel the fear and do it anyway as the self-help gurus advise, not just once, in not just one way, but practicing doing scary things, within reason, to keep sharp for the wee ones.

And so I plunged in.

The water was gorgeous-delicious on my skin. Fresh, bouncy, not frozen, lovely and that’s why they like it too. Refreshing is the adjective that always comes to my mind but it is never enough of a word. The feeling is as if a profound corporal thirst is being quenched and more importantly so is a spiritual one.

Jellyfish are not out to get us specifically are they? I’m no biologist but I don’t think our blood is food for them, like it is for mosquitos.

In all my swimming life I’ve never seen so many in one area, it was a goddamn convention of them. Maybe because it’s a little cove, they all want to hang out together, like a cosy party. And I was crashing.

Bumping into them I couldn’t help scream, every single time. I’m a jumpy person anyways. I often scream at Seadog when he comes into the living room with his quiet, panther-like gait. I think I bumped about 10 of them, it felt somehow like lobbing a football with the back of my hand. But thank god I hadn’t left the boots and shoes at home. Thank God for my boot kicking jellyfish boots. And thank God for the wonderfully refreshing water.

Two stern looking women in floral bathing suits in their sixties showed up and made their way down the ladder steps. They seemed unusual candidates for morning swims with their skirted swim suits, and blond, Elnett-sprayed, hot-curler hairdos. Then one told me, while dipping her one foot in the water, that they were just coming for a quick dip to try anything to fix their hangovers. They weren’t smiling at all as they took turns dipping only their toes in the water for medicinal purposes.

Next, a busload of ten-year-old, inner-city, kayak students showed up in wetsuits giddy on a day out. Yelling holy shite and calling each other pussies. Their minders in thick Dub accents yelled: Stop coursing.  The kids couldn’t believe all the jellyfish and kept pointing. Their training involved jumping in to get acclimatized and used to the water but the jellyfish were throwing off the whole program. Some of the kids were brave enough to do it anyway and some refused and their chief yelled: “ARE YE GONNA WASTE YE MAMMY’S MONEY?!!. GET IN or go get dressed and go ome!!”

I swam in a little circle and bumped and bumped and bumped into one jellyfish after another. I screamed each single bump time and yelped at imagined ones. But not one of them had stung me so far.

A youngish guy with dark thick hair floppy hair a bit like Keanu Reeves joined me in the water just as a colony of even more jellyfish had arrived. I was relieved to have company and company that seemed unafraid. He swum further out than me but near enough to chat. He didn’t move around much and just treaded water in the midst of loads of them.

You’re kidding yourself said a women watching from the land above. There are HUNDREDS of them she told us.

Keanu said, “Arah, they’re harmless! I saw one of the old guys actually rubbing one against his arm up and down just to show the other swimmers they are harmless. They come for a few weeks and then the others come… It’s the red ones, the Lion’s Mane they’re called, they’re the deadly ones. Some of the old guys here try to catch them in buckets to get rid of them. But these ones are fine…”

Seems a bit unfair we brave some of the coldest water in Europe through the winter months and then when it finally, finally actually heats up a bit, these little fuckers show up. And these guys are the good guys. The ones that look like glass.

Meanwhile a well intentioned but grumpy old guy was pouring bleach out of a bucket on the steps to kill the seaweed and moss so the swimmers wouldn’t slip on their way out. I make a note to try to remember to bring some coins for the upkeep collection bucket. I always forget.

My friend C has now determined that winter is much better because there are no crowds of fair-weather swimmers, you can always get parking and it’s more peaceful.  It’s true it’s annoying to see all the debris at our beloved changing area, empty Lucozade bottles and cigarette butts.  I think October last year was pretty great. No jellyfish and not Arctic yet. But C’s hands still get cold in the summer. Look at this!

Next up on the summer swim menu: we had our week holiday back on the Irish Riviera. It was amazing to be back in the neighbourhood with Caliso Bay, Whiting Bay, Ferry Point, and Goat Island beaches on our doorstep.  Despite the foggy days, Little Chief, Mancub and Seadog and I charged the oceans and frolicked for hours in the soulful surf, having the beaches to ourselves in this strangely underused part of the Irish coast. Unbelievably, despite hours of packing for the trip, I hadn’t packed my swimsuit and had to make do with my husbands extra large Simpsons t-shirt that got super heavy when wet. I was jealous of the monkeys in their aerodynamic birthdays suits.

Back in the city again I had many beautiful early Sunday morning swims with C at Forty Foot and evening swims at Seapoint and Sandycove. Getting home shivering from staying in the water a tad too long I was warmed by hot little toddler hugs and Seadog’s hot lips (hot anyway but hot especially in contrast to my frozen ones). Team Kelly-Watson triumphed in the post-swim-heat-up-Prairie-Dolphin Olympics.

This summer I started taking a lot of cold showers and not because I was too turned on! Or actually, yes I was turned on by the thought of the sea in a funny kind of a way. But when I couldn’t get to the sea, I was left craving it like an addict. Hot and bothered I would put on my floral shower bonnet and shower on the coldest dial. It’s always a shock, but it does help to take the edge off. Seadog tells me fast flowing water releases negatively charged ions which makes you feel super positive! It certainly gives me a spiritual cooldown and a pep in my step to continue the day more than a hot one which just makes me sleepier than I normally am.

I noticed the different demographics of swimmers at the different times of the day on my summer program. Mornings and daytime are for seniors and evenings for partyers. Hot weather brings everyone out. The teenagers with their Redbull cans, string bikinis and “that’s amazeballs” talk, the gooners celebrating Katie Taylor’s gracious boxing win, the families with the parents having a break from being harassed by kids out of school, the blissed-out shivering young kids noodling on their kayaks, others chanting an I hate seaweed mantra but staying in the water regardless, Spanish and French exchange students looking gorgeous and ready for romance and some fat men sun-worshipping in their underpants. Seapoint becomes a real city party beach on a warm summer evening. There are so many people in the water that every now and then I imagine I see a whale in the distance, but really it’s just wetsuit-clad arms doing the crawl and spraying water like a whale’s blowhole. I can’t wait til my monkeys are old enough and good swimmers to hang out on summer evenings at the seaside.

One early evening swim was so busy with people I was actually smelling an adjacent swimmer, this portly man’s very strong cologne that seemed to be waterproof? Just then a punky peroxide blonde woman did a huge cannonball jump from the rocks above down into the water. She surfaced after a few seconds in a huge swell of water, gasping. As she hollered with cold shock the light just captured the gleaming silver stud of her tongue piercing. Meanwhile, a fregan man I’d seen earlier with wild God hair and a bunch of random food tied onto his bicycle rack showed up with a black and white dog and first got his dog swimming and then later, stripped himself down and for all to see did a full spread-eagle nude dive off the rocks in all his glory.

I often find myself rushing through tasks as if all jobs need doing fast with the unconscious objective always of getting home safe and sound. It’s maybe a hangover from years of waitressing, a job where speed and getting things done expediently just about keeps the stress of swearing chefs and disgruntled customers at bay. Everyday I have to keep telling myself: Stop rushing. Stop rushing. And what’s worse I often catch myself rushing and holding my breath. So when I’m in the water I focus of letting myself feel my fingers gleefully plowing through the water, grabbing time and holding on to it to slow it all down, to just be able to feel the water on my skin. It’s the perfect special time after or before or during a day’s stresses. And afterwards, like shagging flashbacks, I revisit my swims throughout the day in small pleasurable hits.

My favourite summer swim was the one at 830 p.m with the tide coming in high. Sunset over Dun Laoghaire, pink clouds.  In the big wavy water it felt as if we were all in one giant bouncy castle together. And it struck me how this little swimming hole, the 40 Foot, every single day of the year someone is visiting it, every single day. That night C was rapturous to discover Irish rugby legend and hottie Johnny Sexton was the guest celebrity for the evening. All of us heads bobbing around together like Lilliputians in this giant drink.

Afterwards a woman we didn’t know keen to talk about her experience told us it was her first time.

She looked like she’d seen God.

I’ll be back definitely she said.

To finish off my August swims we had another dazzling blue water and blue sky day for another 40th birthday at the 40 Foot. Boas and cupcakes, tea and coffee for the girls again, our new birthday ritual. We stayed in so long I lost the feeling in my fingers and S had to do up my bra for me. During our swimming girl chatter I learned among other things that apparently the most hardcore, everyday, swimmers have hideous toenails, it’s called 40 Foot Feet!  I tried to get photographs for you but have yet to see these gruesome toenails of legend in the wild…

This is C’s song pic: Rock Lobster

PS Here is an article about sea safety following last week’s drowning tragedy in Cornwall.

To Wetsuit or Not to Wetsuit: December Swims

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I’ve done it! Actual winter swimming. Wednesday, December 13 it was only 3 degrees Celsius outside and the word around the waterfront was that the sea was 9 degrees. The day before, Ireland had experienced a force 10 storm across the Donegal coast and its biggest ever monster wave was recorded: a 67 footer. It was calmer that next morning but still choppy and cold.

I was feeling totally and utterly unmotivated and tired as I often do early in the day. No desire to run or swim or anything except sloth about, eating chocolate, surfing the internet. I’d already gotten dressed in slouching-about clothes and put lipstick on. I didn’t want to have to wrestle myself into workout gear.

Seadog stepped up and said he’d drop off Mancub at crèche and would drive me wherever I wanted to go for a run. I’d had sleep, I had some free time, a chauffeur, there were no excuses for laziness. It was a matter of forcing it. So I decided to go for a coastal run from Monkstown to Sandycove and possibly go for a swim instead of a nap. It was time to see if I could hack real ass-freezing winter swimming temperatures.

Sure enough once you actually gear up and get out there, you’re happy enough even if you have to drag your butt up the path. It’s always a great boost to the spirit to be outdoors and especially for me to see the boats and be on the seafront. The big open sky vista over the sea taps into my prairie need for space, lots of wonderful space. The yachts’ masts clanged musically in the wind. It was blustery but cheerful.

I had Hawksley on my ipod and it was good motivation to run myself along to his chorus of stay drunk and keep f*****g stay drunk and keep f*****g and on and on––a saucy and nihilistic running chorus on that frigid morning. Trying not to wipeout on the pavement I dodged half-frozen puddles and icy patches and dogs wearing little coats and sweaters.  With several walking breaks it only took 20 sweaty minutes to get to Sandycove. Seadog was there in the car reading Murakami’s latest giant novel. I gave him my water bottle and went to go see if I could see any swimmers. There was one white-haired woman drying herself off.

Then I saw other fresh happy older ladies, with their towels in plastic bags, smiling, coming down the path from around the corner. Water was lovely. It was the air that was cold they said. Just don’t stay in too long they advised.

Almost compulsively I find myself singing this song anytime I get near the sea. Another tune from my parents’ dj set list.

Groovy version: Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

Kiddie one: Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside (once you get past the beginning it gets better)

There was a whole bunch of people at the 40 foot. But everyone was already leaving or drying off. I chatted with people about water temperature and the wind. I said I had been making it in twice a month. Oh you’ll find it very cold then, one guffawed. And mind the swell at the steps—it’ll try to take you.

There were three male pensioners drying themselves off, getting their clothes back on. One seemed to be doing a Riverdance-ish routine presumably to heat up. Whatever works! I was going to have to go in the busy frozen sea all alone. The first challenge was getting off my two jock bras discretely. I had to use my most Houdini like skills while Seadog acted as my curtain.

And then poof! Out of nowhere an Elle McPherson lookalike with long blond locks and honey-tanned skin showed up in knee-high, high-heel boots, jeans with a gold studded belt, a perfect physique and I couldn’t help but notice, lovely lingerie. I was astonished by her glamour. It was so incongruous with the shopping bag brigade and flip-flop scene of the regulars here. Her bathing suit though was relievingly sporty.

I was thrilled I wouldn’t be alone for my first (3 degrees Celsius outside) winter swim. She told me about her encounters with seals who apparently live around the corner by the rocks. I said how I wanted to swim for longer than just the dip people seem to do when the water gets to the winter lows and she said she did on Saturdays, in a wetsuit. Her and her friends swim around the buoys for twenty minutes and more. She told me I just needed a 55mm wetsuit. She was the first ever person who hadn’t baulked at even the idea of a wetsuit when I mentioned it before.

The icy pale green water sloshed up over the steps. I was ready before Elle and so I had to bravely go down the two steps that were there when the waves receded. The last time I’d been in at this spot the tide was much lower and I had to go down many steps. So I was a little scared getting in, thinking of the others’ warning about the swell that would try to take me. I held on tight to the rail, asked Seadog for reassurance. “Arrah you’ll be fine,” he said. Arrah is a new favourite Irish word of mine. It’s like a fancy Er…

I just glided in and swam about. It stung my skin and I remembered how that woman I’d met weeks before said it felt like you’ve been waxed. A strange feeling between hot and cold.  Lovely. Not too frozen. But very tingly. A bit like the burn from a swig of cognac or whiskey. Definitely too cold for head dunking. With the tide so high it felt like I was in a burstingly full splish-splashing bathtub.

Elle didn’t swim for very long and so I got out when she did (we’re talking two minutes). She had been doing this longer than me so I followed her lead. She encouraged me again to get a wetsuit. At long last the dilemma was over: To Wetsuit or not to wetsuit, I had my answer. Seadog like myself and most of these others feel somehow that wearing a wetsuit is cheating, but what I’ve come to realize is that while a quick dip is great, I truly want to have a proper swim in the winter, in the sea, and I don’t want to get hypothermia. Anytime I see water, in any situation, in any weather I have such a strong urge to get in and now I can.

On my way out a tall old dude was doing jumping jacks on the spot, trying to warm up no doubt, but bobbing up and down he really did look like an emperor penguin. And around the corner at Sandycove there was Redtrunks Smokey from previous weeks, this time wearing blue trunks but still recognizable with his simultaneous smoking and calisthenics routine.

Seadog and I had a nice cup of tea in the car with the heat on full blast. All very exciting for this prairie girl. Feels very cosmopolitan to be swimming in James Joyce’s swimming hole with women in high heels showing up for a dip.

Later that afternoon, totally inspired by 40 Foot Elle I went and bought a Christmas present for myself from my dad: a beautiful wetsuit, black with fuchsia-coloured arms and the word ANIMAL written on the chest. They laughed when I asked for a 55mm one, doing a demonstration of how thick that would actually be. No a 5 mm one was what I needed so I could still be flexible and actually swim but stay as warm as possible. If I wanted to do a triathlon I’d need a 3 mm. Steady on! It was quite a production trying it on in the store with Mancub in the buggy demanding moooore purple rice crackers and Little Chief impatient to get to the park and the notorious hard work of cramming oneself into the tight rubber sausage casing. And then I sweated like crazy waiting for the shopgirls’ advice.

Now I move it around the house like it’s my imaginary friend. Very looking forward to my first long wetsuit adventure.

Lately, I have been trying to explain what showing off means to Little Chief but sure enough I find myself doing a great round of it at the school gates to any parent that will listen: Guess what I did today!

Since the time of writing something amazing happened: I had my first swim-buddy date December 21! And a follow-up swim December 22. And then three more swims over the holidays including New Year’s Day.

My dream came true. A woman came up to me on the school grounds and said she recognized me from the 40 Foot and I realized she was one of the ones I talked to briefly last week. I so wanted swim buddies and poof here one was. We made plans to go together and she told me to bring a hot water bottle.

Left to my own noodely devices I probably wouldn’t have gone swimming so soon after that icy 2 minute dip in mid-December. My first swim with three of my new anti-wetsuit buddies was a mild morning, 12 degrees out, but damn windy. And there were loads of swimmers. Over the holidays it became much busier. There were hung-over college kids coming to cure their headaches and Dubliners who lived elsewhere but home for the holidays headed to their favourite swim place. There seemed to be mince pies every time I went.

While I waited for my swimfriends I talked to a few oldtimers. One guy having a cup of tea said he was going in for a second swim of the day, he’d swum an hour before further down the coast and now he was recovered he’d get in again. Another guy told me he was meant to stand guard while some women went in naked earlier. Worryingly people actually looked a bit purple coming out the water.

My new friends (2 Americans and 1 Irish woman) showed up, got undressed and in the water super fast, leaving me scrambling with my socks in their wake. I wasn’t expecting such speed. I guess I must normally turtle my way in. The leader C times us and unlike all the other swimmers who were just getting in and then straight out she reckoned we could stay in the water for 8 minutes. It’s true that after I’d flapped around the water for a few minutes and broke through the cold barrier it did feel manageable. My hands and feet were ice blocks but overall it was so profoundly refreshing and the sun was kind of poking through the layers of clouds. We swam in a circle and chatted about Christmas food and school stuff and whatever. This was a great way to start the day, a crazy bit of mum (me) time.

Standing on a hot water bottle while you get changed and dried up was a stroke of genius because standing on the wet cement after a swim with cold wet feet was punishing. I noticed other women seemed to have brought carpet patches to step on. I walked my new buddies back to their cars past the revelling older people doing jumping jacks and drinking hot drinks from thermoses. One man stopped us to offer us some cake with delicious maple-flavoured icing. It’s so heartwarming how friendly this 40 Foot scene is.

Looking at my friends post-swim, I have to say they actually had blue lips and a general blue hue in their cheeks, no joke. I told them this, but they weren’t worried, these chicks are hardy mermaids! I was definitely cold, even with all my clothes on (toque, cardigan, 2 coats etc.) But after two cups of hot tea in the car with the heat blasting I felt good. And all day through the little ups and downs I had this potent memory of that 8-minute supernaturalesque morning event.

Everyone said the 40 Foot on Christmas day was a big event. C wasn’t planning on going because it would be too mobbed. She’s a good leader and she was right. I couldn’t resist walking there though just to see what it was like. It was thronged and festive like a New Orleans swimming party. Hipsters. Families. Old and young. And lots of dogs too. Handfuls of young men trying to impress with their barefoot bravado walking home. People blocks away we’re putting on their socks, still dripping wet. People jumped in with their clothes on, screeching Sweet Jaysus. It was busy. I was glad to save my special day swim for New Years.

New Year’s morning was quiet. The grey sleepy streets were mostly empty. Opposite our house was parked a double-decker bus with the driver slumped over the wheel, trying no doubt to catch up on his sleep from partying the night before. I met C at 9:30 and the sun was trying to break through the clouds. It was another awesome swim, and a shocking way to start the day and year as I mean to go on: with a salty taste in my mouth and vigour in my soul.

Happy New Year everyone! Will try to get my wetsuit in the water for my next update.