time wisely and get dressed as quickly as possible. Replace your swimming hat with a woolly version, even if it’s a bright sunny day. Take off your costume and put on warm clothes. And my top tip is: go commando. There is nothing more fiddly than a bra and knickers when you’re cold, so go without – with all the layers nobody’s going to know.
I have also recently discovered a fabulous accoutrement called the Dryrobe. The clue is in the title: a robe that keeps you dry. It’s a huge, hooded black cloak which makes you look a bit like the Grim Reaper. If you put it on as soon as you leave the water, you can get changed under it and then huddle in it to get warm. I can tell that all the hardcore open-water swimmers are a bit disdainful of the Dryrobe. Boris and Nick don’t have one. My hunch is that it’s not because of the way it looks but because it offers a bit too much comfort for the elite cold-water athlete. But even those who do own one – and there are lots who do – seem to shed it before encountering civilisation. Not me. I wear mine home on the tube. Everyone at the Serpentine thinks this is hysterical but I don’t understand what’s funny. Just call me Jessica, the Grim Reaper.
And finally, there’s one more piece of clothing that has also changed my life since I started swimming in the open air. Shoelaces. Not the ones that are impossible to tie up when your fingers are shaking with the cold but the fizzy strawberry liquorice ones. They are manna after a swim. Whoever decided to turn laces into liquorice was a genius. Swimming and woolly hats off to him.
The Charity Worker
‘The important thing is you live your life authentically.’
I love Waterloo Bridge. But not when it’s raining.
I looked out of the window this morning and there was a fine sheet of drizzle, which I chose to ignore. I’d already decided what I was going to wear: my light blue summer dress with my bright blue-and-green silk scarf. I didn’t have an alternative. The scarf is the most vibrant thing in my wardrobe and the first woman who had agreed to meet me and talk about motherhood is someone I wanted to honour with colour – the etiquette of clothing is very important to her too. But the main problem was my shoes. The only ones I’ve got that go with the outfit are a pair of cheap ballet pumps, and by the time I’ve left our flat and walked the short distance to Waterloo Bridge, they have virtually disintegrated in the rain – that will teach me for buying £7 shoes which have probably been made in some terrible sweatshop.
The cupcakes I’ve bought are suffering too. I’d spent a long time thinking about what to bring. She had invited me to her office at noon but there’d been no mention of food in the email. Although noon is bordering on lunchtime, I didn’t want to be presumptuous, so I’d decided to bring a selection of colourful cakes. I’d spent a long time choosing them. The shop assistant had been very patient with me as I tried out various colour combinations. In the end I settled on light pink, dark pink, blue, yellow, cream and brown. But by the time I am halfway across the bridge, the large paper bag they are in has become sodden, the handle has broken and, even worse, the cakes in their beautiful box have collapsed into one another and are a multicoloured mess.
The person I have come to meet and (hopefully) eat cake with is Camila Batmanghelidjh, who founded the charity Kids Company (although a year after we meet it would close down2). She is as well known for her sartorial splendour as she is for her outspoken views on the plight of disadvantaged young people. But the thing that has always fascinated me about Camila is that, despite her obvious love of children, she has never had any herself. In fact, she has often been quoted in newspaper articles as saying she never had any desire to become a mother. I wanted to find out whether this was true and to see if it’s possible for someone to be a mother without being a mother. I was thrilled when she replied to my letter and agreed to see me.
When I arrive at her office in Southwark, just south of the Thames, I have to wait for a while because Camila has been called to help with an incident concerning a young person and the police. Her staff tell me that the girl involved won’t talk to the authorities unless Camila is there. The children and teenagers she works with clearly trust her.
After about ten minutes, she appears.
Camila Batmanghelidjh is one of those people whose presence in a room is impossible to ignore – partly because she is physically imposing, partly because of her flamboyant robes and turban, and partly because she has just that, a presence. She shakes my hand warmly and leads me into her office, which is unlike any office I have ever been in. It is large and dimly lit, with a collection of elaborate lampshades hanging over a round table in one corner and a circle of armchairs in another. The floor is covered in ethnic rugs; the walls are filled floor to ceiling with children’s pictures. It’s such an assault on the senses that it’s impossible to take it all in with one sweep of the eyes. Suffice to say, the girl who was raised in Iran until the revolution has made sure that if the sultans of Persia ever come to visit they’re sure to feel at home. As for the children from the streets of London, well, they probably think they’re in a scene from Disney’s Aladdin.
I take out the box of cakes, apologising for the rain damage and assuring her that she doesn’t need to eat one.
‘Don’t worry,’ she laughs, taking them from me. ‘Would you like one?’
‘Well, I had rather set my heart on that one,’ I say, pointing to the one covered in cream icing and a sprinkling of hundreds-and-thousands which now also has a streak of cerise pink on one side and aquamarine blue on the other. Camila lifts the cake out of the box, hands it to me across the table and then conjures a pair of plastic teaspoons from somewhere. She takes out a cake for herself and scoops off a bit of the icing, avoiding the sponge. That’s all she eats. One teaspoonful. Maybe two. I, on the other hand, decide to use my spoon as a knife, cutting my cake into quarters and devouring all four. I’m not the sort of girl who eats cake with a teaspoon: you can’t get enough purchase on the sponge.
I take out my laptop and place it on the table with my list of questions in front of me. I’m nervous – I’m not a journalist. It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this. I’m also conscious that I haven’t got long with her, so I hurtle in headlong, saying that although I know she made the decision not to have children early on in her life, I’d like to know whether she ever considered having them. She says she didn’t and that she has never regretted it, which, given her love of children, she realises is strange. So I ask how she decided what she wanted to do with her life.
‘It had no option,’ she replies instantly. ‘It was so powerful. Even as a young child I had an intuition about doing something for which I had no vocabulary. I remember thinking that I needed the words to describe this thing that I knew.’
I’m struck by the fact that she refers to her life in the third person, as if it is somehow separate from her, and I ask whether she thinks some of the most iconic maternal figures who didn’t have children – such as Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale (both on my list of women who changed the world) – might have felt the same.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but what I have thought is that Western psychology is a bit limited on this subject. It’s so focused around the idea of personal need. But maybe there’s another type of psyche which we haven’t got round to describing yet, which is much less interested in individual fulfilment and more driven by vocation, public duty, the psychology of compassion.’
‘So what if you want to become a mother and you want to do something bigger with your life?’ I ask. ‘Can you have a psyche in conflict?’
She looks at me knowingly and smiles. ‘Yes, you can have a conflict,’ she says, ‘but the fact that you are experiencing one, Jessica, suggests your own personal life drive is more dominant.’
I’m embarrassed that she has immediately recognised I am talking about myself.
‘And there’s nothing wrong with that,’ Camila adds quickly. ‘Neither is good or bad, and wanting to be a mother doesn’t stop you from being creative. But there’s a difference between a creative life and a vocational life.