This morning I swam at the Woolton Baths, which are housed in a little red sandstone gem of a 1890's building with columns and a smoke stack, and the word "BATHS" carved in bold letters into the pediment above the door.
Dripping, as it were, with Victorian charm inside too, above the pool the peaked roof is glass and held up with wrought iron struts that arch up like an umbrella's ribs. It's got a good, tiled splashy echo, like swimming in a train station or a green house. When the sun comes out and shines down on the swimmers and the waves, everyone looks up, and says, "Ah. That's loofly. Like swimmin' in th' open air."
The building was home of the Woolton Swim Club until the 30's and was a fire station during the war, after which it languished for twenty years and chunks began to fall off of it like most of Liverpool until it was taken under the weary wing, already pretty crowded with manors and gardens and clocks and towers, of the Liverpool Council, who shored it up and transformed the coal room into the Women's Toilet, and put in the chlorine equipment in a closet in the back, and hauled it back to sputtery life, although they say it can't hold on forever and "looxury apahtments" will be its final role.
I go to 'Adult Swim' from 8 a.m. to 9 when the average age of everybody in the pool is about 75 and the men have bushy mustaches and do Jack LeLane limbering exercises and would not look out of place in striped swimming costumes. The ladies push off regally together breast stroking in their bathing caps and goggles companionably gliding about in pairs sliding through the water like cormorants or turtles, then they bob in the middle chatting and say "Ah. Sorry Luv. We're setting the world to rights." when I crash into their white, sea weed-y arms.
