How To Spot Your Husband In The North Sea

Pretty much the last place you’ll ever find me at 7:30am, or any time for that matter, is in the North Sea but DK is made of sterner stuff and begins every single day of the year with a plunge. Unbelievably, he is not alone. I have a photo of him taken one frosty January morn about 20 years ago over at the Men’s Bathing Pond on Hampstead Heath, lowering himself into a hole cut in the ice. I don’t know who took it, I think Babs Powell, I just remember him getting home and me saying are you out of your mind, I just heard on the news it’s been so cold London Zoo has had to bring its penguins indoors. I’ve hung onto the photo because I keep thinking it might be good for a Christmas card one day. Or obit notice.

The trick, Den says, with cold water swimming, is to start your daily dips in the summer when the weather is better (but not that much better, this is England remember), and then not to miss a day, or you’ve had it, and not to think too hard about what you’re doing, or else you probably wouldn’t do it. Apparently, when you first hit the water, the shock of the cold leaves you unable to breathe, various appendages curl, shrivel and disappear, you immediately start to ache, and after about a minute it gets so painful you have to get out before you pass out. Den says it really gets the circulation going (guess that’s why he comes home blue then). He prefers the North Sea to Highgate Pond because the sea, he says, is warmer.

Highgate Pond, by the way, and indeed all those ponds over there trickling down Hampstead Heath—the Ladies, the Mixed, the Boating—are actually the Fleet River, which then goes underground for about four miles, finally joining the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge. I read somewhere that when they covered over a lower section of the Fleet in the mid 1700s, the gases building up in there from all the dead things floating along it caused it to explode.

Another interesting fact. Sometimes when it’s really cold, the Ladies Pond freezes over (it’s higher than the Mens or something) and, 20 years ago at least, the ladies were then allowed into the Mens, and they would swim all together, which sounds exciting, in a shrivelled appendages kind of way. Not exciting enough to get me in, of course, plus I can’t see me in a rubber bathing cap and being happy about it, or my hair. Although the idea of wearing yellow Marigold (rubber) gloves with big elastic bands wound around the wrists to keep them watertight and getting to look like a big chicken kind of appeals.

DK said a guy came into the Mens Changing Room one day at the Highgate Mens—a new guy, late 40s. The guy takes forever changing into full Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt gear—zipping this, zipping that and eventually a whole wet suit goes on: hood, shoes, mask, the works. And Den’s watching all this, impressed, thinking gosh, this guy must be a pro, gotta see this! So when the guy finally finishes zipping, Den follows him out of the changing room, expecting to see him flip backwards off the dock and go drag the bottom of the pond for bodies or something, but what happens is when the guy heads out of the changing room, instead of turning right towards the jetty, he turns left into the shower room, where he proceeds to take a cold shower for about twenty seconds, gets out, goes back to the changing room, takes off all the gear, gets dressed, and leaves. So don’t think it’s just all crazy people over there.

In the 20 years we’ve lived in Suffolk I have experienced the North Sea only twice, once to retrieve a cute dog toy I had just spent £7.99 on before it washed up in Germany or the Netherlands—true, I only went in up to my knees, but let’s count it—and the other time was DK’s 80th birthday, when I sneaked down to the beach with our son and, casually chatting, we walked into the water, fully clothed, causing much merriment all round.

There’s quite a crew down there in the mornings. Am sure you could join. They meet up about 7:30. Just mind the waves. And the undertow. And there is of course an art to drying off during a Force 10 gale. To assist in this endeavour and for the purposes of keeping one’s balance when getting sand out from between ones toes or private regions, DK recommends a type of knapsack which converts into a canvas stool that has buckled compartments for beach shoes, ear plugs, nose plugs, neoprene gloves, hand warmers, dog biscuits, thermometer, plus any compact folding defibrillators one’s wife might stick in the bag. And you want something called a Dry Robe—a long sort of giant towel with sleeves, black on the outside, cozy fleece (many colours to choose from) within, and which I think were invented for surfers in Australia but make the swimmers all look, from a distance, which is where I like to keep myself, like a community of monks worshipping the sunrise.

Oh. Favour. If you’re ever in Norway, say, and happen to see a little fellow with a beard and orange trunks floating up the Oslofjord? Send him home.