"A couple of years ago, the City of London authority, supported by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, tried to stop people swimming here on winter mornings. The swimmers brought a judicial review and triumphed against the risk-averse killjoys. Since then, the City, which assumed responsibility for the Heath after the Greater London Council was abolished, has installed a ticket machine charging £2 per swim that the rank and file have scrupulously ignored. They're quite right. Buying a ticket to swim in a pond is like paying to climb a mountain, walk through the woods or lie on a beach - the patenting of our natural highs.

For when you emerge dripping and glowing from the Men's Pond you are not only alive, you have slaughtered your woolly mammoth. In a flash, our atomised existence of email, mobile, iPod and BlackBerry is buried under an avalanche of endorphins."

.... "Gonadal contraction is the answer, then, to winter blues. Just don't go telling the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

(Via New Statesman - Cold water, hot blood: .)

| Hampstead Heath | 16 November 2007; 10:29:54 AM |# | | |