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    At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond
    Unavailable
    At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond
    Unavailable
    At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond

    By Ava Wong Davies, Margaret Drabble, Esther Freud and

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Tucked away along a shady path towards the north-east edge of Hampstead Heath is a sign: Women Only. This is the Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond.

    Floating in the Pond’s silky waters, hidden by a canopy of trees, it’s easy to forget that you are in the middle of London. On a hot day, thousands of swimmers from eight to eighty-plus can be found waiting to take a dip before sunbathing in the adjoining meadow. As summer turns to autumn and then winter, the Pond is still visited by a large number of hardy regulars in high-vis hats, many of whom have been swimming here for decades.

    In these essays we see the Pond from the perspectives of writers who have swum there. Esther Freud describes the life-affirming sensation of swimming through the seasons; Lou Stoppard pays tribute to the winter swimmers who break the ice; Margaret Drabble reflects on the golden Hampstead days of her youth; Sharlene Teo visits for the first time; and Nell Frizzell shares the view from her yellow lifeguard’s canoe.

    Combining personal reminiscence with reflections on the history of the place over the years and through the changing seasons,At the Pond captures fourteen contemporary writers’ impressions of this unique place.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDaunt Books
    Release dateJun 20, 2019
    ISBN9781911547402
    Unavailable
    At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond
    Author

    Ava Wong Davies

    Ava Wong Davies is a freelance theatre critic and playwright based in London. She won the Harold Hobson Sunday Times Award for theatre criticism in 2018. She writes regularly for Exeunt Magazine and The Stage, and has written arts criticism for The Line of Best Fit, Fest Magazine, Girls on Tops and the Independent, as well as on avawongdavies.wordpress.com. She is currently part of the Soho Theatre Writers Lab 2018-19.

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    Reviews for At the Pond

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      There’s something really special about swimming in ponds and lakes. I wait every year for my first dip in the lake, heading out past the reeds and the cattails to float above an unseen bottom, sometimes brushed by lacy tendrils of seaweed, wondering whether fish are darting past me in the cold, refreshing water. My lake is quite different than I imagine the Ladies’ Pond at Hampstead Heath to be but as I read this collection of essays from authors and poets of different ages, races, and sexuality I felt the same love and feeling for place that I feel for my lake, plus their appreciation of the community of women, open and inclusive and welcoming.The Hampstead Ladies' Pond is one of several formed by the River Fleet as it flows through and under London. It is both a natural and a created space, one that feels timeless. It is nature tucked away and appreciated for its very hiddenness. The varied short essays are organized by season starting with those intrepid author swimmers who brave the cold of the pond in winter. Obviously the pond is more crowded and in demand during the summer but each of the seasons chronicled here is appealing. The reader slips into the essays the same way you'd slip into the smooth waters of the pond. Written by the famous as well as less well known authors, the essays are as different as each woman's experience swimming although each firmly places themselves in a long line of women bathing in the pond, a fellowship of women from every walk of life. As a collection, there is the unhurried importance of nature's role in creation and in the discovery of self. The essays read without any urgency, just a bucolic sense of rightness. Instead they inspire a slowing down, an examination, and an appreciation. This collection is probably best for those who can think of nothing better than sliding into the soft, magical fresh water of a pond or lake, those who love to swim "wild," but all nature enthusiasts will probably enjoy the wonder of the place just as literary readers will be pleased by the wide-ranging references. I will think about several of these gorgeous essays for a long time, especially as I bob in the ripples blown across the surface of my lake.