One of my life’s aims is to swim in as many lakes, rivers, pools and oceans as I possibly can, to use my liberty and swimming skills as freely as I can. I love the feeling of being in a large, fresh body of water, its soft immersive, vast or deep buoyancy.
I’ve swum in a freshwater lagoon near Acapulco in Mexico, with the guide reassuring us there were no crocodiles in the water that day. I’ve swum in a busy London indoor pool noisy with swimmers thrashing about and in Australia’s only women’s pool. I’ve swum in the Weisser See lake on the outskirts of Berlin, the same lake that my grandmother swam in, before fleeing Germany. At Jaffa’s Alma/al-Manshiyah Beach, in Tel Aviv, I’ve looked up from the sea to the Mahmoudiya Mosque’s minaret.
