The oil company where I sometimes work owns a massive complex on the South Bank of London, which is probably one of the most expensive places in the world on which to build. That's oil for you. It's funny working in an environment where money is no obstruction.

The complex was built in 1964, at a time when progressive employers, as this company like to think of itself, were a lot more paternalistic than they are today. So, the building came complete with a load of staff amenities. Alongside the usual canteen and gardens, there was the more decadent sports hall, a shop, squash courts, even a rifle range. Some of these still exist in one form or another, although their part of the building is due to be redeveloped into a shopping mall.

But I'm not going to tell you about that, what I want to talk about is the pool.

Right at the bottom of the building, in the sub-basement, under the very foundations of the office megalopolis, is a full-sized swimming pool. All staff are allowed to use the pool for free, even contractors like me though not, alas, the underpaid, largely black and South American non-English-speaking catering and cleaning staff.

The pool is a beauty but swimming there is a bittersweet experience, not least because of its backdoor apartheid. I'm not sure how I feel about exercising in a corporate place, where movement is connected to my health and productivity as a worker. In addition, the pool may be lovely, but its days are numbered, it's a non-profit-making obstacle as far as the building managers are concerned. They are currently busy petitioning the local council and other authorities for permission to transform the basements into a shopping mall. It hasn't happened yet, but it will happen. The thought of bulldozers wrecking that beautiful pool makes me want to cry. It will be the destruction of one of the last few human spaces in this terrible corporation.



If you time your visit right and go when nobody else can face a swim, you can sometimes get this enormous pool to yourself. If you get it wrong, however, you might find yourself with an oil person charging into you, hogging the lane, kicking you in the face and being all work-hard-play-hard about swimming.

The pool is outstanding as a piece of early 1960s design. The company's symbol is rendered in a wall of gorgeous tiling. The pool itself is lined with countless small square mosaic tiles in three shades of blue. The patterns are never repeated, I've checked. It makes my brain hurt trying to imagine the work that must have gone into lining that pool. Lane markers are eight black tiles wide. There is an underwater viewing gallery, currently out of bounds, with portholes. Sometimes we sneak down there and let the blue mystery of the endless water bear down upon us, occasionally punctuated by a body bobbing and thrashing past. One time my friend videoed me jumping in and swimming around on the other side - nobody noticed a thing.


The pool also has a deep end, very deep in fact, maybe more than three metres. It's too deep to swim to the bottom unaided without the water pressure destroying your ears. I love the deepness of this pool, swimming over the edge of the shelf where the pool turns from shallow to deep is always a thrill, it feels like gliding over the edge of a cliff, it's like flying.

The pool reeks of neglect - not long to go now until you're gone, sweet place. Scoreboards with the shadows of old teams burned onto them no longer keep score. The three beautiful high diving boards, prime 60s design, are out of use, their ladders taken away. The showers and lockers are fucked up and the changing rooms are a muddle of left-over towels, empty bottles of shampoo, and strange squares of paper that users are required to stand on when changing "for the purposes of hygiene."

There are no windows, so there's no sense of the time of day, the weather, or any other distraction; swimming here is all about the swim, moving your body, being in the water in the present.

Here's a film of me swimming in this pool (.mov, 1.8mb)