Pondlife - A Swimmer's Journal

The ponds of Hampstead Heath are small oases; fragments of wild nature nestled in the heart of north-west London. For the best part of his life Al Alvarez - poet, critic, novelist, rock-climber and poker player - has swum in them almost daily. An athlete in his youth, Alvarez, now in his eighties, chronicles what it is to grow old with humour and fierce honesty - from his relentlessly nagging ankle which makes daily life a struggle, to infuriating bureaucratic battles with the council to keep his disabled person's Blue Badge, the devastating effects of a stroke, and the salvation he finds in the three Ss - Swimming, Sex and Sleep.As Alvarez swims in the ponds he considers how it feels when you begin to miss that person you used to be - to miss yourself. Swimming is his own private form of protest against the onslaught of time; proof to others, and himself, that he's not yet beaten. By turns funny, poetic and indignant, Pon fe is a meditation on love, the importance of life's small pleasures and, above all, a lesson in not going gently in to that good night.

Product details

• Authors: Al Alvarez, Alvarez Al
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 09.04.2015
• EAN: 9781408841020
• ISBN: 978-1-4088-4102-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 198 mm x 24 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, swimming, Coping with old age, Relating to late adulthood / old age, Coping with / advice about ageing