tap. There’s also a regular supply of biscuits and cakes (often homemade) brought in to share with fellow swimmers. Or should I say fellow eccentrics. Because the members of the Serpentine Swimming Club are a raggle-taggle bunch. From impoverished artists to merchant millionaires; from teenagers to octogenarians; from those who were born to the sound of Bow Bells to those who were educated at Eton: all united by a love of swimming in the open air.
And since then I’ve been returning. Mostly reluctantly, because there is nothing about the exercise or the cold water that is getting easier, even as the months are getting warmer. But I do quite enjoy the walk through Hyde Park and saying to the ducks, ‘Hello, here I am again, dreading it as usual!’ And, just as I did in Formentera, I am staying in slightly longer each time, and when I get out covered in green slime I notice Boris and Nick looking at me approvingly, and that feels good. I’m still a novice, but when I reluctantly concede to the BBC Radio 4 team recording me there, I do a pretty good job of looking like I know the protocol. But there’s a world of difference between a lap of the lake and swimming the Channel. Me and the ducks both know that.
Does Motherhood Make You Happy?
Today I discovered an interesting piece of Serpentine trivia. On Tuesday 10 December 1816, a heavily pregnant woman was found drowned in the middle of the lake. She left a suicide note addressed to her father, sister and husband. Her name was Harriet Westbrook and she was the wife of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Just two weeks after her death, Shelley married again – some people might consider this to be in unseemly haste. His new bride was a young woman called Mary, who happened to be the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of my original twenty women (now twenty-one). After the marriage she became Mary Shelley, and but for Sappho, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen, she might have made the list herself as the author of Frankenstein, one of the greatest Gothic novels of all time. The Shelleys – Mary and Percy – were very much in love, and lost three children in pregnancy before finally having a son. Water was then to play a part in their fate again when Percy drowned off the coast of Italy. Mary was only twenty-five at the time and never remarried. So it just goes to show, even if you do something big in your life, even if it’s big enough to always be remembered, you could still be only a stroke away from tragedy. And that’s why you can’t let the small disappointments in life hold you back. The presenter wasn’t going to work out, but I can’t let that stop me. I decide it’s time to start another list.
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I open my laptop and at the top of the page I type the heading ‘Mothers’. I then tab down about half a screen of white space and write ‘Non-Mothers’.
Starting with the ‘Mothers’ section, I mentally mull through all the living people I can think of who are well known for motherhood. I type: ‘the Queen’ – she is, after all, the matriarchal head of the most famous family in Britain. But it’s undoubtedly a long shot. Then underneath I write: ‘Katie Price’, followed by ‘Kerry Katona’. With ten children between them and careers built largely on magazine features and reality television programmes about them, their ever-changing husbands and their children, both women have made being a mother a professional occupation. Another long shot, I guess, unless either OK! magazine or I are prepared to pay.
Next I scroll down to the ‘Non-Mothers’ section, think for a moment and then type ‘Jennifer Aniston’. Is there anyone else in the world who has had to endure more conjecture about whether or not she’s pregnant or wants to become a mother? Her situation has not been helped by the fact that for years she was cast in the role of tragic heroine as a result of her ex-husband Brad Pitt’s relationship with Angelina Jolie. I scroll back up to ‘Mothers’ and type ‘Angelina Jolie’, and then I create a new subsection called ‘Adoptive Mothers’ and write her name again. With a total of six children – three adopted, three biological – Jolie has to be one of the most extraordinary combinations of mother, Hollywood star and humanitarian campaigner the world has ever seen, only really rivalled by Audrey Hepburn before her. If Angelina or Audrey decided they wanted to swim the Channel for charity, they’re the kind of women who probably wouldn’t even need to get wet.
Over the course of the next few weeks the list grows. New subsections emerge under the overarching title of ‘Mothers’ in order to differentiate the various routes that women have taken to achieve this status. As well as ‘Adoptive Mothers’ I add ‘Foster Mothers’, and if people have been public about having to use assisted conception I put them under headings entitled ‘IVF’, ‘Surrogacy’ and ‘Egg Donation’. It’s harder to categorise the ‘Non-Mothers’, but there are subsections here too. There are those women who never wanted to become mothers and are child-free by choice. And there are the women who did want to become mothers, but because of a variety of circumstances have not done so. It’s quite hard to decipher which is which. Of course, ultimately, every woman in the world could be on my list. They’re in one category or another. But as I add people, I find myself drawn to those who have an interesting story to tell around being or not being a mother. Some are household names, others are famous in their particular field, and others are women who very few people may have heard of but who have done something quietly amazing.
For quite a long time it’s just me and the list and nobody knows. It gets longer and longer: there’s no way I’m going to be able to meet and eat with everyone on it. But that’s OK. I can’t imagine the Queen will say yes. Or Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie for that matter. But ultimately if a plan is going to come to fruition, dreaming doesn’t do it. Something has to happen to force the movement of thought into action.
And then it does. Someone posts a message on one of the Channel swimming internet forums saying they have to cancel their swim this coming August and offering up their slot if anyone wants to take it. If I could get a team together, it would be a chance to do a relay which, as John has said, would be a good way of seeing what swimming the Channel is really like.
I take it and the next day, emboldened by a full English breakfast after a swim in the Serpentine, I start composing my letters, determined to keep writing until someone eventually says ‘yes’:
Dear … [fill in name here]
I am writing to ask whether you would meet and eat with me to help me get fat to swim the English Channel and answer the question: Does motherhood make you happy?
The Etiquette of Clothing
Spend any significant length of time with open-water swimmers and you’ll soon learn that the etiquette of clothing is very important. I had quickly established that you can’t wear a wetsuit if you want to be classified as a Channel swimmer, but in fact they are anathematised in general. Read this from the Serpentine rulebook:
Concerning wetsuits, we recognise that some external events are ‘wetsuit-compulsory’ and people need to use them for training. However, their use is considered by many not to be within the true spirit of an all year round open-air swimming club.
The true spirit of the Serpentine is skins. Thankfully, this isn’t quite what it sounds. You don’t have to risk arrest for indecent exposure in Hyde Park. You can wear a swimming costume. But there are also pretty strict rules in open-water swimming on what constitutes a costume. It should be of a material not offering any form of thermal protection or buoyancy. It should be sleeveless (i.e. no creep below the shoulders) and legless (i.e. nothing that extends to the upper leg below the crotch). You can wear a hat. Hats are legit as long as you only wear one of them. But don’t even begin to think about those nifty boots or gloves. Covering your hands and feet is strictly prohibited. Goose fat, whilst allowed, has long gone out of fashion. Contrary to what people used to think, it doesn’t keep you warm, it just makes you sticky, and it’s impossible to get off. But for long swims it is advisable to rub a bit of grease in places prone to chafing. That was one of the things I learned in Formentera, where some of the customs of this strange world had been revealed to me for the first time.
But the etiquette of clothing doesn’t end there. It’s not just about what you wear in the water, it’s also