With the book now fully funded, and pre-orders continuing to come in, it's all hands to the pumps at Lido HQ and Unbound as we busy ourselves getting the book ready for print.
At Unbound the focus has been on the design work to date, and the sample designs look good enough to eat... we'll let you have a sneak preview just as soon as possible. The manuscript was delivered some months ago, and we wait with nervous anticipation for feedback from the editor.
Here at Lido HQ the focus for Janet and I has been last minute copy additions, and plugging any holes in our extensive image library. We have been busy working our way around pools we needed to revisit to re-photograph. Pools where, for example, significant changes to the look and feel of the place might have taken place since we last visited.
It's always a pleasure to visit a pool, but sometimes, when one is on a mission, sacrifices have to be made.
I visited 7 Devon pools during the course of a weekend quite recently, and I didn't swim in any of them. It was torturous. I had to throw myself in the sea to ease my troubled soul. Thankfully all the staff and volunteers I met along the way were so cheerful and friendly (thanks for the cuppa Chagford!) that I couldn't feel too down in the dumps about it.
During the recent heatwave I got some serious #LidoQueue practice in as I visited some of the Kent pools - what a blessing Walpole Bay is... huge, free and not a queue in sight
But hats off to the pools who were run off thier feet; they managed their queues with good cheer and professionalism. And I resorted to bribing the children with cookies. So it all worked out in the end.
In all, in the last month or so, I've taken over 1500 photos at / of pools... this afternoon has been all about the editing.
We thought you might like a little sneak preview.
You might also like to know that Janet will, throughout August, be tweeting daily about the 16 year journey that has taken her around every publicly accessible lido in the country. She's already started by talking about the Guardian article that was her original inspiration, which led to a direct twitter contact with Ashley Norris - the journalist who wrote it. It was a thing of beauty to see social media achieve such heart-warming, open connections when it is so often a vehicle for the disingenous and duplicitous. If you don't already, you can follow her @deliciousswim and enjoy how the rest of the month unfolds.
Happy swimming.
Emma.
