liadnan

So, how does this blogging thing work again?

As many of those who know me well are aware, I am not by nature an early riser. Nor am I particularly pleasant to know on rising or for some time thereafter, be it early, middle or late.

People tend to assume as a result that I don't like mornings. This is quite wrong: I love being up in the early morning, at least when the weather is decent. I'm just not very good at actually doing it.

For some reason I woke up before 6 this morning, and on looking out of the window and realising the weather was actually fairly decent, by comparison, decided to do something I've wanted to do for a while: rather than faffing around for an hour or two, just have a coffee and cycle straight into work and from there go swimming at the Oasis open air pool (which is only about five minutes walk away). I've only known about the place for a month or so: I think I first read about it in an article by Sedley LJ in the LRB where he mentioned his habit of swimming there every morning, but since then several people have mentioned it. The showers and changing rooms are a bit scuzzy but since there's a perfectly good shower in chambers that doesn't really fuss me, and actually swimming in a heated open-air non-chlorinated pool (and at local authority prices at that), in England, in the heart of central London, without having to faff up to Hampstead Heath and the Ponds or anything, is worth any number of scuzzy changing rooms.

So I did. Even the traffic wasn't too bad at that time (one of the reasons I habitually don't leave until 9.30 at the earliest is that I try and avoid cycling through the height of the rush hour). Swam for an hour in the early morning sun, with just a few other people in the outside pool (there's an inside one as well), had a leisurely breakfast in Soho at Maison Bertaux, and was working in chambers earlier than I'm out of the shower on a normal day. Must do this more often.