Issue 54 - Bodies of Water
JUNE 2023
Bodies of Water
I'm very proud to say I am working on a book, with Jim Marsden's photographs at its heart, about the relationship between women and water. Below is a bit of an introduction.
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The day before I moved to London, from a small Welsh island to a tiny box room south of the Thames, the temperature climbed to 28C, and I had the first sea swim in the UK that I remember having as an adult. I can picture it very clearly. Leaving a pile of summer clothes and my parents’ water-shy dog, walking away from any other soul. Entering the lapping teal water, not stopping under my whole head was under. The floating and the freedom. The seaweed and the sand. Then the drying in the warm sun, the smell of hot, salty skin. No idea what lay ahead of me.
London was incredible. I got a young person's pass for free theatre performances. I went to at least three art galleries a week. I tried tahini and date molasses, Aperol and beaver town beer, miso and yuzu for the first time. The number of cinemas, restaurants, galleries, markets and even the plain old corner shops within walking distance of my house just felt impossibly exciting. Looking back it's hard to separate this hopefulness from being twenty years old. But it felt like anything could happen.
Fast forward nine years and I found myself in a tapas bar on a sunny evening, handing back a gem of a ring to a man I loved. We'd planned to move back to Wales together. Newly alone, somehow I knew I had to make a big change in my life in order to climb out of a heart-shaped hole. I packed my belongings into the back of a moving van, and unloaded them the same day straight into a damp cottage with a view of the sea from every window.
Returning home was beautiful. Warm and comforting, but it also felt like giving up somehow. I missed the man and the city and it's people dreadfully, and a low-resolution sadness hung around in the background, like a tab always left open. I felt I had failed, and that I had traded a full life of creativity for one of empty country expanse.
One day in late summer, I consciously thought about what island life offered that the city of smoke could not. The answer was pretty obvious as I recalled that day before I had moved: the deep, clean water. That same afternoon, I got into it, right in front of the office I worked in. I remember my colleagues being pretty vocal about how mad I was. It was raining, though only gently, but the clouds were heavy. Swimming in the sea, they said, was for when you visited Mallorca. Not Anglesey.
Getting in the strait that evening made me view somewhere very familiar with new eyes. It was literally immersive, and something about taking my body weight from my feet just felt really good. Like the fresh air was seeping in through my skin.
Over the next few months, I found myself dipping more and more. The occasional river or waterfall pool, hidden spots in coves, sheltered by hills. But mainly it was the sea, with all of its flotsam and jetsam, tides and currents.
January came, and a new friend invited me on a mountain walk with her, with the option for a very cold lake swim. She would be there, she said, for moral support. We walked a loop, watching our breath in the air, and then stopped at her chosen entry point. The ground cracked with ice. Her boyfriend smiled and shook his head. There was no way, he said, that he was going in.
I'm not sure what I had expected. A pep talk? Some breathing exercises? A secret code that would make it just feel less cold? But suddenly, my friend was stripping off and walking straight in, making it look as though it were a soothing bath. She nodded at me, smiling with her tiny bobbing rubber duck of a thermometer. It read 4c. Before I could overthink it, I too was pulling on my costume.
I walked in slowly, fuelled by wanting the good opinions of my new friends. The water inched up my body, feeling like tiny knives over my skin. Once in, my breath seemed to leave me entirely. My mouth made an involuntary 'o'. There were almost definitely some swear words. The water was so clear I could see the paleness of my body beneath me as though I were looking through a pane of glass.
I was only in a few minutes, the bobble of my wooly hat staying well above the water. My hands and feet went numb, and my thighs burned poker hot. Carefully walking out, I felt new. Brave. Very cold and very alive.
I've been living back in Wales now for four years, and I am happy to say I have settled. I belong here. Swimming - throughout the seasons - has made me feel more at home then I ever have before . There is something calming about it, but it gives me energy too. It's an excuse to find new places. Stop thinking about the grind of the everyday. Take my dog, who loves it too.
The tale I have told here is, of course, one as old as time. And it's tempting to over-romanticise the experience of swimming in outdoor spaces. Heartbreak healed by nature. Taking more pleasure in simpler things as one takes more turns around the sun.
Of course it's more complicated than that. But a big part of me wants to lean into the romance of it. Swimming, woven through the chaos of life, can be a transformative experience, habit and hobby.
Which brings me on to this very exciting project. I am proud to be writing this book with Jim and Jo and Tina. Really I suppose it wants to ask; why do so many of us - particularly women - find solace in the water? What happens when we take the 'achievement' out of exercise? How does is offer an escape that we can't find elsewhere?
As Katrina Naomi says says in her poem ‘The Kelp Forest’ : ‘there’s no peace like this in the dry country.’
Jim's photos, which will form the core of the book, are as clear and breathtakingly beautiful as a cold water swim. They show the beauty of the UK, of the water and of these women . But what I love about the images the most, is the connections they show. They paint women at home amongst the waterscapes, claiming them, almost becoming part of them. They show a confidence, but not a competitiveness.
We hope it's a celebration of people, of place, of connection. Perhaps of a gentler way of experiencing nature. An invitation to get out there. And, perhaps most importantly, a call to action: to look after the places we dip into.
Good Things to click on
After a memorable week's holiday in the highlands and Skye, I can tell you, you should drink beer from the Black Isle, buy some jewellery here, stay in a wooden cabin with a Big Sky, eat a mac and cheese pie from this bakery and pop into this handpainted glass shop if you have some cash to spare.
Jim told me about the Otter app this month. It's pretty darn useful.
I wish I'd thought of the concept for this book, which we devoured on holiday. Painfully relatable.
Every episode of Succession, ranked. Can't stop thinking about that last episode.
“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. Still, when we try to describe a smell, words fail us like the fabrications they are.
The physiological links between the smell and language centers of the brain are pitifully weak, not so the links between the smell and memory centers. Our sense of smell can be extraordinarily precise, yet it’s almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn’t smelled it (e.g. a new book, lilac).
Smell is the mute sense, the one without words. We use words in terms of other things to describe smells (e.g. floral, fruity, smoky). We tend to describe how they make us feel. Try it. Describe the smell of your lover or your child, or your favorite scent."
From: A Natural History of the Senses
This month, I have shared Jim Marsden's images, which will be at the core of a new book we are working on, together with the brilliant Jo and Tina.
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