This song was based on a story told me by my swimming buddy Lee Whelan. It was recorded on my phone in the cafe at Tooting Bec Lido after a refreshing 7 lengths.
Tag Archives: Tooting Bec Lido
Swimming Song for All Seasons
Loudon Wainwright’s Swimming Song with a few more verses to take into account the joys of winter swimming at Tooting Bec Lido in South London. Recorded on phone in the cafe after a refreshing swim in November – temperature around 12 dgrees centigrade.
Playing the Lido Shuffle
100 Great Things
- Sainsbury ‘Basic’ Tortilla Chips because they are the closest thing to the tortilla chips I used to eat in El Paso Texas and they only cost £0.50 for a big bag.
- Reading glasses from the 99p Shop seem to work OK and are great for people who lose their glasses or sit on them. Thank you!
- Bicycles. Kirkpatrick MacMillan (1812-78), a Scottish blacksmith is credited with inventing the pedal-driven bicycle so we could get about for free.
- Tooting Bec Lido is the largest fresh water swimming pool in the UK if not Europe. Unheated and open year round, it has become a focal point in the development and popularisation of cold water swimming in the UK.
- South London Swimming Club swims at Tooting Bec Lido and ensures the Lido stays open and that the legacy of past generations is preserved for future ones.
- H2Zoom digital recorder is the most incredibly generous piece of recording equipment that for just over £100 enables you to record your sounds and then process with free sound editing software from Audacity.
- Garlic and Tomato Bread at Buona Sera restaurant in Clapham is the lightest, crispiest pizza base topped with a soft tomato and garlic sauce. A sensual delight, bigger than a plate and only £4.00.
- The Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park always has interesting contemporary art exhibitions which are free and afterwards you can stroll to the lake for a swim with the swans and a nice cup of coffee in the Lido Cafe.
- Open Mic at the White Lion on Monday nights. Everyone is very generous and the performances cover all genres and range from the sublime to the atrocious, compered by Al ‘The Bass’.
- Soundcloud lets you post and share music. It provides amateurs with a place to showcase their work and network with other musicians.
- Moleskine 18 month soft cover diary has that lovely quality feel and if you buy it in January (i.e. 6 months after it is released) you get it cheaper and you have 6 months of pages to use for notes.
- Streatham Hillhas that nice mix of being near the center but by a park, full of interesting people but not too posh. It’s just a very very nice place to hang out.
- Guitars. Infinite pleasure and enjoyment and if you have one on the road, someone is bound to come up and ask to play it. They are just wonderful things. And as they say, if you learn three chords you can play any song.
- Wetherspoons pubs have a fantastic selection of beers that are well looked after and cost around half the price of beer in any other pub. What a great gift to the British man with a light wallet.
- Freemind is an open source mind-mapping software. Use it to gather and sort out information and to structure work. Its bloody brilliant and its free. Here’s an introduction: Mind mapping will make you better.
- Zen Meditation: a spiritual practice that requires you to just sit and stare at a blank wall. That eschews preaching in favour of personal realisation. Let Ruben Habito explain the Fruits of Zen.
- Shepherd’s Pie with peas is just such a lovely comforting dish.
- Green lentils in tomatoe sauce by Nigel Slater is a really simple and delicious recipe; nutritious and so cheap.
- Dogs and dog walkers like Miguel on Tooting Bec Common and Kim in Battersea Park tend to be lovely, caring people with a bunch of canine characters.
- Nigel Slater‘s recipes and his attitude to food and cooking which is very down to earth. He likes his bacon butties in a white bread.
- Food for Thought is a small restaurant in Covent Garden which has been producing great vegetarian food since the 1970s. The apple crumble recipe using oats with flour is great.
- Making marmalade.
- Red wine, one month it is good for you, the next month not.
- Friendship.
- Children … are not your children they are life’s longing after itself, says Kahlil Gibran.
- Early morning in the summer before everyone is up and about.
- Birds singing before dawn. You know you are going to have to get up soon and wonder if it is worth going to sleep again. But the birds just sing on.
- Friday nights cooking and drinking with my friend Nicholas Kirmatzis, the picture framer and philosopher.
- Vegetable steamers
- Back packs hold the promise of the open road and a much simpler life.
- Facebook for putting us in touch with old friend and acquaintances and making us go a little cyber crazy!
- Skype for letting us talk to friends on the other side of the world and even see them.
- Records and record players: The Long Player: Our father on vinyl …
- Desert Island Discs
- Balls and all the games they enable.
- Tea and coffee
- The Samaritans: Our common humanity is a shared joy and sorrow.
- Women (and for women, ‘men’ I guess)
- Pencils, preferably sharpened with a knife and with a rubber on the end. Perfect. And the magic of the lead inside the wood.
- Penknives
- Hitch-hiking teaches you about life and people, connects you with serendipity and gets you from A to B.
- TED talks
- Irish drinking songs: Her eyes they shone like diamonds …
- Irish accents can just talk and delight without saying anything in particular.
- Hot crumpets with melted butter, sprinkled with some sea salt and freshly ground pepper, eaten on a cold winter evening after a long walk in the wind.
- Pancakes eaten with lemon and sugar.
- Apples stolen from an orchard in the middle of the night and eaten while still chilled by the morning dew.
- Crying
- Laughing
- BBC Late Junction music show for new and exciting sounds from around the world like Knut Reiersrud’s I don’t feel no ways tired (even better with the Alabama Boys – studio version).
- The Turning Ceremony as performed by the Whirling Dervishes of West London.
- Ken Jones haiku and haibun writer, Zen practitioner and guide.
- Football in the park
- Kissing
- The South Bank with all its free events and buzz.
- Richard Deakin’s allotment on Tulse Hill where you can look out over fruit cages and vegetable plots to Canary Wharf and the City of London in the distance.
- Oak trees and copper beeches
- The Greek islands in 1978
- Walking through and in towns
- Sleeping out under the sky
- Making coffee and or tea in a saucepan over an open fire in the morning on a beach
- The sound of music on the street: Nellie Furtado’s I’m like a bird coming out of a shop in St Martin’s Lane.
- Visiting Netley Abbey on a moonlit night. Climbing over the fence and wandering in the ruins.
- Jamming.
- Listening to live music in the Neptune pub Whitstable on a Saturday night.
- Wizz Jones a great British folk singer and generous guitar teacher.
- University of Southampton
- A cafe in Paris, a cup of coffee and cigarette to start the day.
- Bidets … just seems like a good idea to wash your bottom rather than wipe with a tissue.
- Making love in the afternoon … middle of the night … morning
- DADGAD tuning for guitars
- Clubs and societies
- London where you can experience the whole world without catching a plane
- London parks
- Buskers
- Riding the freight trains across Canada
- Charity Shops
- BBC Storyville documentaries
- Giggling
- Holding a baby or small child
- Dancing
- Street sweepers
- Tim Winton author of Dirt Music and other fine books.
- Crosby Stills Nash & Young and Four Way Street
- Sailing off Rhosneigr in Anglesey
- Mussels picked from the Estuary at Maltreith and cooked with white wine and garlic.
- Fasching in Bavaria
- American folk and blues music
- Me voy pal Pueblo
- The BBC
- Climbing trees
- Made up games like handball against the cafe wall and garage football in Apperly Bridge
- Playing cards
- The Wren Church in St James’ Piccadilly and the Alternatives organisation
- Le Creuset wrought iron casserole dishes … just dont drop the lid on your foot
- Egg and chips in the cafe
- Salt’s Mill in Bradford
- Oscar the cat who sits on heads and sticks his paw up your nose to wake you up
- Skinny dipping (here are some dos and donts)
- Shunryu Suzuki and his book Zen Mind Beginners Mind
Damn it, we’ve run out of space and still so many great things to talk about. What would you add to this list … or subtract.