For more like this essay about swimming pools from City A.M. – The Magazine, tap here In the swimming pool we can both forget who we are and dream of becoming someone else,” writes former competitive swimmer and author Piotr Florczyk in his short study, Swimming Pool .
And indeed, when I ask myself why I used to slouch down to the municipal pool, towel trailing behind me, practically every day one summer it was – I feel – a way of washing myself away. It all starts with the aggressively utilitarian building you walk into. You push through a turnstile, venture down slippery, grotty steps into a dingy room.
Shoes off, you abandon your clothes, jewellery and other detritus. In a murky puddle of water masquerading as a footbath, you cleanse your feet. With your face obscured by cap and goggles, you leave the tiled hallway for the cavern of the pool.
You plunge in and the water hits you. Cold chlorine rushes up your nose and water seeps in through the gaps around your goggles as you find yourself submerged. You squint and shiver.
You come up desperate for air. Then, like Jesus parting the Red Sea, you separate the water that enfolds you with scooped hands. Using strokes you first learnt as a child, you strike through the water.
When you reach the end, you flip over and continue shuttling between two walls in a sunken pit filled with chemically-treated liquid, housed in a large, echoey building full of gymmers and swimmers, showers, tiles and mops. There is an intensity tha.
