My sister-in-law recently sent a picture of herself on a socially-distanced sea swim near her Devon home.
My heart leapt with joy for her, but also contracted a little. When will I next get a dose of vitamin sea?
I am a keen open-water swimmer. This summer, I was going to step it up with two of the Outdoor hydraclubbioknikokex7njhwuahc2l67lfiz7z36md2jvopda7nchid.onion Swimming Society's distance challenges, the Bantham Boomerang and the Dart 10k.
Both are now cancelled.
Still, some open-water facilities have cautiously resumed sessions.
One of my chattiest WhatsApp groups is drawn from Swim Doctor class attendees at my local lido. This outdoor London pool hopes to reopen, with socially-distanced measures for members-only, on July 4.
Patricia Nicol shared a selection of fascinating books featuring swimming, including Polly Samson's A Theatre For Dreamers (pictured left) and Monique Roffey's The Mermaid Of Black Conch (pictured right)
A few of us have squeezed into wetsuits to swim at London's Royal Victoria Docks.
Swimming in what is technically the Thames, in a well-run facility overlooked by the mothballed Excel NHS Nightingale, has provided one of my more surreal lockdown moments.
But, mostly, I can only read about swimming.
Polly Samson's transporting A Theatre For Dreamers is set on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960.
Erica, a bereaved young Londoner, heads there with a small inheritance and ends up hanging out with Leonard Cohen and his muse Marianne. Hedonistic days are spent sprawled on sun-baked rocks, then leaping into the glittering Aegean. Heaven!
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