By Samantha Hillman

Editor of D&D’s Sunday Paper 

A QUICK DIP

Are you good at swimming? I was once. Land-based sports were not for me. On foot I was spindly and slow. I huffed, limped, gasped and panted through every primary school sports carnival, with the graceless desperation of an injured deer. But in the aquatic realm? I shone. Shone! Somehow, suddenly, six year old me could swim. And by god I was fast. Powerful! Dextrous! Slippery as a fish! I don’t really remember how it happened, but I do recall - in vivid detail - the robust assortment of lollies that they sold at the pool shop, so it’s safe to assume that’s where my motivation stemmed. But that’s not important. Nothing is important when you’re a star. I collected fistfuls of blue ribbons and pinned them triumphantly to the corkboard in my bedroom forecasting a life of waving graciously from podiums. Everything was going swimmingly (ayyyy!!!) until I got to high school: double the pool length and triple the competitors. 

I trained for weeks. I lost by a mile. It became clear that excelling in this new environment -  this physically + metaphorically bigger pond -  would require hard work, earnest dedication, and a willingness to start from the bottom. I quit immediately. And these days I hang around lap pools the way a salty old man might hang around a bar, unwilling to accept their day is done.  I allude to my brief stint as a competitive swimmer with the air of a decorated Olympian forced to retire due to a shoulder injury, rather than someone who briefly held the record for the under 11’s 25m freestyle at a small village primary school with 213 students. The good thing about quitting while you’re ahead is you get to die a legend. Or at the very least, spend the rest of your life convincing yourself that you’re one.

And yet! The smell of chlorine, the promise of red liquorice twists. The pool remains an oasis. What a joy to stretch a towel over hot concrete, the soundtrack of shivering kids screaming long-forgotten rules (“no swimming after you eat or you’ll get a STITCH and DROWN” / “DON’T wee on your brother!”).

And so, an ode to the local pool. This pool. Those pools. This poolside playlist. An Instagram account to splash around in. A fun-loving twin-set that does pillow and pool with equal ease. The floaty one in pink. Speaking of pillows: this inflatable one! This significant upgrade from the paddle pops sold at the coin-only tuck shop. This entertaining guide to NYC’s public pools. This informative guide to London’s lidos. A bamboo coaster set for your pool-safe tumblers (the tabletop equiv. of this Aulenti chair?). (Is the martini a pool-appropriate drink? Probably not, but this description of an olive-less one was fun to read all the same). This portable, nautical lamp, to keep reading past sundown. Apparently we’ve jumped the shark on the swimming lit, but this book - this breathtaking ode to Australia’s swimming holes - is well worth owning. The very hilarious foreword is by Benjamin Law, whose book The Family Law is not about pools but is a joy to read in the sun. And lastly, just a bunch of really good, weird and wonderful (surprise:) pools (!) to fawn over, none of them designed for competitive freestyle.