But recently, the Mamits have started to infiltrate these aquatic havens. There’s a distinctive type: affluent but oddly charmless, devoted to the principle of fitness but more devoted yet to the principle of a bottle of wine a night. Once upon a time, they would have played golf. Then they moved on to cycling (“Better for the knees”), where they could be spotted all over the Home Counties in tubby pelotons, bulging in their branded Lycra like sponsored haggises.
They’ve also made inroads into yoga. While everyone else is calmly trying to breathe and stretch a bit, they perform competitive headstands, huffing and puffing like circus strongmen. Now they have discovered the joys of open water.
As usual, gear precedes any idea: from day one they are decked out in long shorts, designer wetsuits, Orca hats and £200 dryrobes, those ubiquitous fleece-lined towel-coat combos that are good for drying off, warming up and getting changed out of wet gear afterwards.
On my gentle laps, I find myself being bothered by these men. They come splashing up the inside, not looking where they are going, racing as fast as they can. I want to explain that there is no excuse for taking the racing line: it’s a reservoir. If anything, they will get more of a swim if they take as wide a route as possible. I want to explain, also, that the women are not watching them from the side and cheering them for their sloppy breaststroke. But I don’t. Even if I tried, they wouldn’t hear me; they are most likely wearing waterproof earphones so they can listen to business podcasts as they go along.
This attitude is the heart of the problem: seeing every activity, every hour of the day, as something that has to be maximised for professional and personal development. Sometimes it’s just nice to look at the ducks.
Not everyone in the Serpentine Swimming Club found Hancock’s political dip endearing. One unnamed member was especially irate. “We don’t know if he’s a seasoned swimmer or not, so it’s foolhardy of him to jump in because you want to show you’re like Vladimir Putin,” he told an attendant journalist, before adding that Hancock had “broke the rules.”
At least with that attitude, he’ll be back in the Cabinet in no time.
