‘The problem with breaststroke is you’ll have to be in the water longer. One of the main challenges of the Channel is the cold. The aim is to get over to the other side and out as quickly as possible.’
‘Doesn’t a wetsuit help with the cold?’
‘I’m afraid you can’t wear one of those. Not if you want to be an official Channel swimmer.’
This is news to me, and it isn’t good. I hate the cold, possibly even more than I hate exercise. In fact, one of my main mottos in life is: ‘You can never be too cosy.’
John goes on to explain that wetsuits hadn’t been invented in 1875 when the Englishman Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the Channel. The rules state that you have to remain true to that tradition today, and can only don a costume, hat and goggles.
‘Right,’ I respond slowly, taking in all the information he’s given me. ‘So how far is it and how long does it take?’
‘Twenty-one miles. It takes around fifteen hours on average. But you’ll be adding another five to ten hours if you want to do it breaststroke.’
There’s a beat of silence.
‘Fifteen hours?’ I say, trying not to sound too incredulous.
‘That’s right. It’s a long way to France.’
I pause as I take in the enormity of what he’s just said.
‘Well, I guess at least I can stay in a nice hotel when I get there and have croissants in bed for breakfast.’
He chuckles again. Actually, it’s more like a guffaw.
‘You can’t stay in France,’ he says.
‘Why?’
‘You don’t go through passport control when you’re swimming the Channel. As soon as you touch land, you pick up a pebble and then you’re back on the boat to England.’
‘You mean I won’t even get a croissant?’
‘No,’ he laughs. ‘But I wouldn’t worry about that. If you do swim the Channel, you won’t want to move or eat anything for at least a week.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘That bad.’
I don’t quite know what to say next. I’m starting to think this wasn’t the right big idea after all. I half-heartedly enquire about the training camps John organises for aspiring Channel swimmers, which were the reason for my call. He tells me that he’s running one in Formentera, a little island off Ibiza, in a couple of months for people who are doing their six-hour qualifier. I tentatively ask what this means, dreading the answer, and he tells me you need to be certified as having swum six hours in water below sixteen degrees Celsius before you can attempt the Channel.
‘You mean you can’t just go down to the south coast on a nice day and start splashing?’
He laughs. ‘Why don’t you come along and see how you get on?’
‘OK, I’ll have a think about it,’ I say. ‘It sounds good.’
I’m just saying that. It doesn’t sound good. It sounds hard. I put down the phone feeling slightly sick but then do what I can to rally myself. I’ve been on a six-hour walk. Surely swimming for six hours is just the same thing, but horizontal. How hard can it be?
Addicted to IVF
One of the things that is not on my bucket list is seeing my legs in a tabloid newspaper. But I woke up this morning and there they were.
I’d agreed to do the article as publicity for my book. They’d been very specific that I had to wear a dress to the photoshoot. No dark colours. No patterns. Three different people had rung over the course of twenty-four hours to remind me. I’d picked out a red dress I’d bought in an M&S sale a few years ago, one of those great buys that cost twenty quid but in a good light (I like to think) looks like it could be Chanel. When I got to the location of the shoot the photographer looked me up and down.
‘Nice,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid you’re going to have to take those off.’
He pointed at my black tights.
‘What?’ I said, horrified.
‘The paper only does bare legs.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Didn’t they tell you?’
‘No. They told me to wear a dress. Three times. They didn’t mention anything about tights. Once.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No can do, I’m afraid.’
‘But you don’t understand, my legs never come out,’ I said. ‘They haven’t seen sunlight in over a decade.’
‘It will be fine,’ he said, trying to placate me. ‘We’ll airbrush them if they look a bit blotchy.’
To say I was mortified would be an understatement. The whole dress business was sexist enough. The only time something similar had happened to me was when I was doing a temping job in a city law firm during my university summer holidays. At the end of the first day my boss had come up to me and said that I could come back tomorrow as long as I didn’t mind wearing a skirt. If she’d been a man I might have thought it was sexual harassment, but it was just company policy. Even twenty-five years ago it seemed archaic. But this is the new millennium – is there really a national newspaper that will only photograph women in dresses (no black tights)?
I suppose, in a way, I should be pleased. After all, a dress says ‘woman’ in the same way that infertility says ‘failed woman’. In tabloid terms the most ‘womanly’ woman is always a mother. They must still think there’s hope. Otherwise, surely, they would have put me in a black trouser suit. On the double-page spread to the left of my head are the words: ‘Addicted to IVF’. I suppose going through multiple rounds of treatment and having nothing to show for it but a cleaned-out bank account does seem like a pretty extreme habit. I look at the picture, all legs and smoky eyes, and can’t quite believe it’s me. For years I’d kept my struggle to have a baby a secret and now, suddenly, I’ve become the poster girl for infertility. It’s not even as if it’s going to be tomorrow’s chip paper. The article is on the internet, indelible forever.
A few days ago I made a pact with myself that when the article came out I wouldn’t look at the online comments. Nobody should go into that lion’s den. But of course I immediately do. I scroll down and the first comment reads: ‘I want a baby, kinda sums her up.’ I kinda have to agree. I do want a baby. One that I have made with the man that I love and who, with any luck, will inherit the best bits of both of us. I want to introduce them to the world: read them The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. I want to organise birthday parties with pass the parcel and musical bumps. I want to open stockings at Christmas and plan egg hunts at Easter. I want a reason to go to the zoo and make fairy cakes for tea. And on the subject of food, I want to encourage my children to love shellfish and sprouts from a very young age.
Throughout the day I watch in fascinated horror as more and more comments appear and people anonymously press the arrows beside them to indicate whether they agree or disagree. For the first time in my life I have a tiny taste of what it must be like to be a celebrity, shaped by the opinions of people who have never even met you. But overall I come out of the den fairly unscathed; sympathy for my story seems to be strong. The lions are licking my wounds, not eating me.
TV and radio interviews follow. A girl could get used to being picked up in a chauffeur-driven car. But, all things being equal, I’d much rather be singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’.
It’s an extraordinary and surreal few weeks. But the most overwhelming thing of