Parliament Hill Lido

 Hampstead. 17C. Unheated. 63m long.

 

We had to wait, whilst something happened in the Lido between sessions, when we arrived early yesterday for our reserved slot. 

Not that it mattered as there really were only a few there. Perhaps 25 swimmers. Divided into 10 lane churners and 15 larkers  by which I mean groups of small boys and girls taking turns to push each other in and make a great noise. 

It was built like many Municipal Lidos were, around 1938 and there were proud rows of photos of the opening scenes back in the day when the Local Authority had august figiures to give speeches and a Municipal Band to play "excerpts from 'Beauty and the Beast' all afternoon." It was made of dark brick with metal windows.  All square and functional. Parks and Recreation style. The Corporation Crest still adorned one end of the pool.  And the clock, now restored again, gave dignity and discipline to the whole pool. It was all clean and tidy.

Apparently "there had been a great fuss over the admission charges" (which for me was £4.20) the life guard said down to us, as we talked to her, before she left us... not to remonstrate with the very noisy boys, but to actually engage them in more useful skills such as learning to dive. 

We swam up and down and the sun started to come out again and I suddenly noticed the colour of the water. Depending on the angle of the eye and where the sun was in the sky the pool changed colour from a shallow end silvery white glitter through green, aqua-marine, light blue dark blue to the deepest purple. Simply swimming was to watch your hands run through a deluge of wavy colours that we had never seen the like of before. 

We saw afterwards that this was due to the entire pool....and it's massively wide and long..being lined by a polished stainless-steel liner. This silvery metal floor with its stippled non-slip surface reflected the sunlight out again and made a marvellous display of colour to the eyes. It's well worth seeing the pool for that colour show by itself. 

We swam and watched the rich people of Hampstead and the poor people of St Pancras ..it being technically Islington and St Pancras municipal ownership "built for rich and poor alike" splash around. "This intention was at the root cause of the recent protests at the increase in prices", the lifeguard told us.

There were rows of cubicles to change in and a single warm shower, and the doors had all been removed, so the changing cubicles might as well not have been there. I suppose its only a matter of time until it's all unisex changing. More protests to come on that matter I feel, it being Hampstead in London.

We sat in the sunshine and warmed up again in the sun and watched the different people coming in to use the pool. One man, beautifully-toned, came in with a state of the art changing cloak and dived in powering up and down with a bow wave the size of the QE2. A woman walked past wearing swimming costume, and a fur coat and heels. 

As we walked out we looked at more photo-memorabilia of the opening. Young men smoking and lazing around the cafe. I suppose one or two might even be still alive to tell of this innocent time.