Genius loci, one regular calls me. Spirit of place. This season, I kneel daily beside my town’s historic lido, writing slow on scrolls of pool-length paper while swimmers do fast laps and grab the lunchtime sun. Writer-in-residence. Genius loci, one regular calls me. Spirit of place. The emergency which delivered me into this strange occupation… Read More Laps of Longhand
Words to open the launch of Watermarks: Writing by Lido Lovers & Wild Swimmers (a Frogmore Press & Pells Pool collaboration), spoken by Tanya Shadrick, Watermarks co-editor & Pells Pool writer-in-residence. Because this book sprang from deep sources during my residency at Pells Pool — & because I feel so entirely at home among you who love words &… Read More Watermarks Book Launch
A short, true story: On finding an old photo of myself When I was 18 and looked like this and sounded – as I still do – like the place I come from, and was taking a year to work in a holiday complex and earn enough money for university (the first in my whole family… Read More Why I Write Outside #1
“And after the swimming there was watching. Watching a writer at work…with the patience and strength to kneel for her craft, and a great capacity for thought and communication.” As co-author of the forthcoming Lido Guide, Emma Pusill has had a busy summer: Around her demanding day job, she was in training to do 5k of… Read More A Lido Daytrip: Emma Pusill of The Lido Guide
It is, I say, the happiest I’ve been: For a single, mid-life season to be out of doors all day, open to the elements and whoever comes, and in the official role of writer-in-residence after two years of writing without an audience and roaming the Downs, wondering what on earth had possessed me. Yes. The happiest… Read More Loneliness of the Long-Distance Writer
Sally Goble has written about swimming for The Guardian since 2013, with a blog and features that have documented her many inspiring adventures in the water – including a Channel swim, ice-swimming in Sweden, and doing a mile a day for 50 days as a fiftieth birthday challenge. It was a delight to welcome her to… Read More A Lido Daytrip: Sally Goble
In the years Deborah Herridge worked in Lewes, she never fancied a dip in Pells. But when she returned to town last summer it was in her new and much hardier identity as Channel swimmer in waiting… I used to work in Lewes as the Education Officer at the castle, and it saddens me I… Read More Swimming in the Rain
