There was swimming before the war, and this little anecdote I mentioned when I was five and when we were at Felpham. I don’t recollect any swimming at Brafield, although there was a pond, the Delamere Pond and, I think, I’d at least got in there in the summer; but it was a shallow pond with reeds in it. I very much enjoyed swimming, especially with my father; sometimes all of us would go... we’d go to the Finchley Pool, which was... I seem to recollect it being somewhere up... high up Edgware Road, towards Stanmore.

I would... I then, with adolescence developed this very unpleasant skin condition where I would have weeping eczematous patches on my... on the flexor aspects of my arms and legs. And... and I felt that I... they would exude a horrible sticky pus and spoil my clothing and I... I didn’t dare strip, and so, I think, the skin thing removed me from swimming and from a lot of other physical and social... activities. I mean, I felt I was... I felt I stank, and, indeed, I did stink. It’s some... Updike, I think, describes how he had been cut off from a lot of things by having psoriasis which occurs on the extensor side of the limbs.

But, somehow, this skin condition, which had been given all sorts of ornate Latin names, the... cleared up by... by itself when I went to Oxford and then I loved swimming there. I went to sometimes swim at Parson’s Pleasure, I don’t know if people still swim there; one could swim naked there, and... but I also swam in the... in the Cherwell and along a canal which.. which ran by the side of Christchurch. And swimming... back in London as a medical student I like the Gospel Oak Pool, a big open air pool on Hampstead Heath.  But also I love the ponds on Hampstead Heath. I don’t know if people still... still swim there. And I... but I’ve... there hasn’t been a month of my life, or even, I think, a week of my life... the only weeks of my life without swimming have been immediately following orthopaedic procedures when I... I have an open wound.

I’m a different person after a swim, I’m much nicer, I’m told, I’m relaxed and amiable. I get very furious if... if a swim is thwarted.