When did you first start coming to the Ponds?

I came on occasions before I moved into the area in 2019. I live about a five-minute walk away so it's right on my doorstep. Before, I was just coming as a visitor to Hampstead Heath, with mates who knew about it. There’s just quite a brilliant aspect to it, you know. London is such a competitive place and there's something about the Ponds that somehow strips that away. It's a great leveller. I think also that there's a sort of warmth to it. It's a very… it's much less judging. There are all these little signifiers in London, to do with your parents, your clothes, your car, where you live, or your haircut, or your social group. All these little signs, and at the Ponds, you don't really have that.

How do you think your relationships at the Ponds differ to outside?

Do you know Norman Mailer, the American novelist of the 50s and 60s? He's got a good expression that when two men say ‘hello’, one of them has to lose… and that's really true in London. That if you think about your little encounters, you know, it's just sort of relentless. Whereas in the Ponds, I genuinely think that when two people say ‘hello’, and people do often, there isn't a winner and a loser, it's just a friendly thing.

Apart from the relationships, what do you enjoy about the activity itself?

For me, it's about realizing that you are, that all of us are, part of nature. When the birds land or take off or you see insects floating on the top, you know, it reconnects you. It's an escape from the kind of falseness of urban life. I was also thinking about the water aspect… it's where we come from. So, you're returning to the primal human state of when we crawled out of the water onto the land. If you want to be really philosophical about it, I think there is that connection to the origins of man, but it's in London. And so it's odd, in a way.

You know, there's no advertisements, no branding, and those things are really potent… you don't really notice. It does have a massive effect on you, when that stuff's removed. The thing about being in London is that you don't realise how relentless the stress is, at a core level… you just exist with it. You just have to deal with it in order to be here. It's only when you're away from it, that it's revealed. And I think maybe that's what happens in there, that you are allowed time off from that.

This may be just me, but I suspect it isn't, I suspect it is also about my group of male peers… that our relations are quite, difficult. You know, they're often friendships that have been going a long time… they need quite a lot of managing. They are like romantic relationships, like marriages. I have a reputation in my group of addressing things that make the others feel uncomfortable, that are to do with friendships, or to do with the behaviour of men.

I think my male relationships are just quite a lot of work.

Why do you think you are able to challenge these dynamics?

Without blowing my own trumpet, I’ve read more books, I’ve done more therapy, or I’ve just invested more time and intellectual energy in it. My mates would maybe cast me as emotionally incontinent, but I'd rather that than be emotionally constipated — to be unable to acknowledge, let alone address, these things in male relationships. Particularly with these very long relationships… people are not very honest about their feelings for each other, essentially.

Also, when you get this very British thing, this sort of piss-take culture, you know, where everything is conducted as a piss-take. And actually, people are often hurting from what's been said, but if you show that it hurt you, then you lose somehow. That's like the surface level of the interaction between men. Then underneath, you've got the genuine feelings that they're really hurt, or they're upset. But to make a fuss, it's like, ‘oh, why are you such a sensitive flower?’

Have you managed to break down any of that facade with any of your friends?

Yeah, they're all intelligent men, and they can be…. (Pause)

Intelligence is sometimes --

-- Yeah exactly, it's often a means to avoid dealing with things. Often they don't, you know… they're sort of uncomfortable things that you're asking them to do, or to talk about. And so often, they're resistant to it. There are lots of tactics in the male culture, ways of avoiding it, or just a lot of bravado that exists in male culture and male friendships, that means that these things can be avoided.

Why do you think that you are that outlier, because normally there is an emotive reason why people stray from the norm?

I think because my father died, in fact both my parents are gone now. I'm discovering, when you reach that stage in life, you question all kinds of things. It makes you go back to your relationship with your parents. And in particular, as a bloke, your relationship with your father and the knock-on effect on your male relationships.

I've got a son and he said a lovely thing to me. I told him about my father and about the problems I had with him. My son just graduated, and he rang me up to tell me his result. Then he says, ‘oh, you know, that thing you said about your dad, you know you've never done any of that to me. You've always been so encouraging to me, and so positive. I think it's brilliant that you've managed to identify the way your father was, and then not be like that to me.’

That was just brilliant in terms of maleness… that was just a moment of total triumph. All the work that I'd done of thinking about my dad and talking about my dad with a therapist and so on, was made worthwhile because not only was I processing it myself, but I was able to… to tailor my own behaviour towards my son and to not pass it on.

You know that the Larkin poem ‘They fuck you up your mum and dad…’ and then you do the same thing? To not, or at least try not to do it to my own son… I think that was partly to do with my father dying, that's really triggered my interest in masculinity and male relationships. I tried to win my father’s approval by being like him. It's taken me a long time to undo all that… well, not undo all of it, but to just pick and choose, to see it a bit more for what it is.           

    

How have you managed to stop this cycle of trauma?

I'm not very good at complimenting myself but I think a lot of what my friends would dismiss as being emotionally incontinent is the courage to address things that people prefer to leave alone, to leave unsaid. Certainly with my son, I can think of specific moments when my father would have reacted in such a way and I chose to react differently. It ties back to this theme of the culture of denigration which happens amongst blokes, putting each other down and taking the piss out of each other. My father would do that to me all the time, put me down. If he'd have been asked, he would just say that he was only joking. It was just piss taking, it was just having a laugh and whatever. But if it's constantly being done to you by the figure that you're looking up to and trying to win approval from, then it's really destructive. I definitely have held back from doing that to my son, and when he's wanted to do things or been interested in going in a certain direction, that part of me wanted to say, ‘Don't do that, do this. This is what I want you to do.’ I've just let it go and allowed him to do what he wanted. In the end, it's just borne fruit, you know, and he's made his own world.

How has the Pond changed since you’ve been coming?

I mean, this whole thing about charging… now you have to pay four pounds to swim… before it was free. I think this changed the demographic in a bit of a negative way, because it's not nothing to pay that amount of money. For example, kids… it's really removed them from the equation. This is a real shame because if you happened to be at the Ponds just after their school day, it was just full of lads and they would bring this completely different energy to it. It would be brilliant because they’d just have a riot and it was just a nice reminder of a different age. You saw your younger self, and what it was like to be with your mates, just pushing each other in and doing a bomb and all that. So, it's a shame that that happened because it just imposed that London, ‘Can you afford it? Have you got the money?’, you know? It was just a bit of a reminder… the whole fucking thing belongs to the City of London, and that's who you're swimming courtesy of, the city.

What’s your favourite memory at the Ponds?

I always go in off the board and I like to make the dive as perfect as possible, to disturb the water the least amount, and to be elegant. So, I really like the moment of hitting the water. I'm a great one for diving in. I mean, a lot of my mates think it's very naff, and they just lower themselves in on the stairs, you know, and that's how the “real pond people” do it but I've always liked diving. Definitely… you know, birds landing on the water. If you happen to be right out on the perimeter and you see a bird come in from a long way off… just the whole genius of being able to do that. The way that their feet hit the water slightly raised, I mean, that's a pretty beautiful sight especially when you're at eye level. So, I would say that they're more kind of regular, not individual, memories. They're kind of repeat memories. Repeat moments that I like. I would say in terms of the blokes, I mean, blokes do the most bizarre things in there. There is quite a kind of suppressed hilarity about the way that some men behave… it is just very peculiar. It's very tolerated and no one laughs or points, but sometimes it’s like “What the fuck is he doing?” There was a guy in there the other day with an enormous cock, and he was standing outside the shower area, and he was doing this thing that was like dancing as if there was music, but he didn't have any headphones. He was just doing this dance and it was a bit like he was making love to himself while he was dancing with himself. He just did it for hours and hours. Like, when I arrived, he was doing it and I swam, came out and showered and he's still just doing this thing. So, that’s just some of the bizarre behaviour you get. I do find quite entertaining though.