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4 Frognal Close, Hampstead classic Bauhaus hideously disfigured by neglect of its abstentee owner.

This historic family home - 4 Frognal Close, Hampstead in London NW3 - is finally on the market in a tragically sorry state after being neglected by its' owner George Michalias who had merely to keep paying a few utility bills to maintain its order since his purchase in 2009 - 15 years ago!

The sale was a desperate one being as it was at the height of the disaster of the Great Financial Crisis - no prospective buyer could get a mortgage not even the well-heeled families who were keen to move in and make a home. The then owners who had lived there for 40 years were pressed by probate circumstances, the huge anxiety of the collapsing world markets and the credit crunch to sell to a quick cash buyer. Enter Mr Micalias, showing no interest in the classic design although his visiting family did seem to. It takes a certain kind of contempt for a property of this ilk to be allowed to deteriorate so catastrophically in wealthy London. But that's what privateer landlords, landgrabs and expensive lawyers, can render in this day and age. Even squatters didn't touch the house except the cannabis farmers who managed to break in and set up shop. They were evicted a couple of years ago. Private property ownership in this country should come with more robust legal commitments as exist in Australia and elsewhere. The EDMO (Empty Dwelling Management Orders) of local councils are simply toothless. After many years of neighbour complaints, Camden Council could only oblige George Michalias to 'clean up' the front of the house which he did by felling the entire front garden (including a decades-old wisteria and beautiful rambling roses) and erecting a side fence to prevent interlopers (ho ho!)

The wooden window frames of the living room date from the original 1960's refit.

There are zero photos of the interior in the 2024 brochure because what's left is appalling. Original 1930's and 1960's parquet flooring gone, walls and ceilings collapsed. A once-cherished garden left to revert to wilderness.

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The City of London Corporation which manages Hampstead Heath in North London is proposing 5 options to the future running of the historic swimming ponds. Most are completely unacceptable. Hideously rushed process - swimmer groups were given only days to digest and discuss before the all important meetings next week on March 9th & 11th. There are thousands of people locally who need consulting.

The City also offer a Hardship Fund for those who can’t afford the enforced charging of £4 p/d. This is patronising, divisive and will of course be limited. Their balance sheet is a minimum £2.7 billion at the moment and they increased their revenue last year by £58m which is enough to cover the running costs of the Heath for 10 years.

They are using the unavoidable death at the men’s last year and the madness at the lido on that very hot day in July as a pretext for forcing through charges and fully financialising the swimming ponds - their decades long ambition. The occasional overcrowding Is a separate issue to the money and would not be resolved by having barriers. In fact, management of the crowds would be far harder especially at the women’s. This year post-swim idlers were asked by staff to leave to let others queuing outside in to swim. They did so willingly precisely because they had not paid. It all worked really well. Lifeguards have told the Corporation they do not want barriers.

There are so many issues but it all boils down to politics not money. The City are nothing if not rent extractors.

The whole beauty of the ponds and particularly the women’s is that they provide an equal opportunity and a safe haven for all because they are free at the point of access. Many pay for a season ticket and many more would in order to stop enforced charging if only the system was easier to use. Also, the paying machines are shoddily maintained and often broken in to. Lots of money collected as cash by hand at the mixed pond last summer went missing. (No one was forewarned of this system).

There are convenants protecting free access to the ponds at the Heath in the Heath Act of 1871. Lord Iveagh of Kenwood House bequeathed the ponds for future generations to enjoy free swimming. Already it was a huge concession on the part of swimmers groups to permit voluntary payments back in 2005.

The City is riding rough shod over land law and treating users with contempt. We all know they’ve wanted to privatise the ponds for years. Staff hours and protections will suffer. Far fewer people will swim as they are already squeezed by ever increasing rents and generally expensive London living. Many will fling their overheated bodies in to the unregulated non-swimming ponds which is hazardous.

Please support THE PROTESTS:

6.15pm March 9th at Parliament Hill Yard by the cafe, tennis courts and staff building.

3.30pm March 11th at the Guildhall near Bank tube station.

KEEP THE SWIMMING PONDS OPEN TO ALL!!

Follow twitter: #pondsforswimmers #lovetheponds

Join some swimming user groups for updates.

KENWOOD LADIES POND ASSOCIATION

HIGHGATE MENS POND

MIXED POND

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The UK in lock-down, ponds in lock-out while Mother Earth enjoys a long overdue lock-in.

By Karla La Pond Antoinette Published Hampstead Village Voice Spring Edition March/April 2020

UNEDITED VERSION

Last year, this swimmer overheard surveyors airily announcing to lifeguards they would blow another £30k on tweeking (yet again) the ventilation in the Ladies' pond mouldy shower room. To that end, amongst other additions, a heater was installed. Guess what. Within 2 months it blew up! Thus runs the typical sorry storyline of every City of London Corporation's (CoLC) jerry-built construction. I have a list. £100,000s has been squandered since 2015 on such works. Now, pond swimmers of the Heath find themselves engaged, for the umpteenth time since the 1980's, combatting the hyper-wealthy CoLC's ravenous need for cash and threats of closure.

To impose entry fees is deplorable bordering on treachery. The City knew the responsibilities when they took on the Heath. Health and Safety are cited as key drivers of the move. To mine eye, CoLC are responsible for many omissions on that score. Another one of my lists.

Chain lock protest, Ladies Pond, Hampstead - February 2020.

So, the Town Clerk and Chief Executive of The Corporation (subgroup of The City), John Barradell insists that Bob Warnock, his Heath Superintendent, must railroad through a system of enforced charging by March 11th, with necessary exclusions and, bless them, a hardship fund for those who cannot afford a season ticket. But this isn't famine-ridden Ireland circa 1846. It's no hardship not to swim and who wants to be on that list anyway. Bob claims the consultation process began in October, much to the bafflement of swimming user groups who only heard about it in January and were not in full possession of the various proposals until February 24th. Barely a day's worth of 'process' has so far happened - mere lip service, it seems.

Several savvy swimmers have publicly demolished CoLC’s accounting figures (where available), concluding that the Heath subsidy is down, but income up; from flashy film shoots, mega athletic events etc. And that's with much of the voluntary cash contributions going AWOL or getting nicked. But CoLC claim cuts are due to sustainability measures (hello, where? definitely not at the Ladies, the newest build) As one swimmer says, “CoLC are not stewards but occupying vandals dressed up as philanthropists”.

What are the key issues? Not money, clearly. CoLC’s balance sheet is reportedly £2.7 billion. Politics is at the core. Enclosure, as we know from the saddest chapters in history, is a slippery slope - civil disobedience could explode. The fees, a kind of indirect taxation, are to prove the burdensome, overcrowded ponds profitable so they may be flipped to privateers. Staff hours and protections will surely suffer.

It seems unlikely at this stage that we can shaft the mercurial CoLC as managers, that is Parliament's prerogative. Where are the exit clauses in the 1871 (1989) Heath Act, anyway? People power must therefore prevail where all the legal arguments will pivot on what is determined to be 'fair' and 'reasonable'.

The women's pond for me is half way between where I grew up in Hampstead and the family plot of my final interment. My aqueous transit lounge. Yes, that's a privileged position but truth is, everyone who visits feels similarly, on their long, often arduous, journey from cradle to grave. The all encompassing appeal of the ponds is their gracious power to absorb everyone's energies, even, let's hope, the misplaced posturing of CoL's avaricious clerks.

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Letter to Monty

Published Hampstead Village Voice  - Spring Edition: March/April 2020

UNEDITED & UNABRIDGED VERSION BELOW

By ATEL

Courtesy of PA MEDIA as published on BBC.CO.UK

My dear niece and I, in common with 1000's of other street activists during the recent General Election, were denounced as anti-semites for merely holding Labour party pamphlets. It was a sickening experience. Our collective gene pool gushes gloriously with Semitic, Celtic and Asiatic DNA. Modern British one could argue - akin to a cherished cuisine. Yet none of this matters when political tempers are so frayed and afraid.

Last year, the mass media's relentless, histrionic and disingenuous coverage of anti-semitism in the Labour Party, has granted permission for all sorts of accusations to occur. Haranguing anti-racists means that real racists get off scott-free, indeed it ensures their electoral success. And then, inevitably, we had NW3's quasi-Kristallnacht.

Boris Johnson's 'weirdo' editorials dressed bigotry up as banter and his nativist politicking stoked the flames of reactionary disdain. Overtly vicious mass hate was only ever one economic downturn away. Home Office statistics reveal that reported hate crimes have doubled to 78,000 since 2014.  

Tory voters, particularly new converts, don't seem sufficiently bothered by Johnson's extreme personality defects and political vacuousness. Power is too alluring even when it denotes the elite's Stockholm Syndrome suction hold over the mob.

My ever-pragmatic niece has decided, post Labour defeat, that to help reverse these trends, she will teach Revolution & Anti-Imperialist struggles to her state school pupils. A new example every Wednesday before morning assembly; England 1642, France 1789, Haiti 1791, Poland 1830, Russia 1917, Ireland 1922, Hungary 1956, plus 1848, 1989, 2011...and all that.

What a way to start the day! And, one hopes, help end the disproportional representation of our toxic system. Citizens go forth!

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OMG!!! Is this photo prophetic or what?

From the archive: Royal wedding 2018

Our two American lifeguards, Miss Kimmy of California & Miss Hope Springs Eternal of South Carolina donning their crowns at the newly re-opened women's pond on American Day of Independence, July 4th, 2016.

So, hang on a minute...were they the advance party for the HRH-in-waiting Madam Megan Markle?

First the Americans, right, they come over here to make our pond great again and now, check it out, they've done the whole country!

Mental how they've turned those steps into mock thrones yeah - so creative, so functional, so.....in the face of swimmers ascending at their kneecaps. Pain.

The idea of two queens in red nylon shorts running things...pretty cute though, innit.

HASHTAGS #royalwedding #americansrulebrittania #rockontherepublic #accelerate

POST SCRIPT 2020: LOOKS LIKE THE HASHTAG ‘ACCELERATE’ HAD SOME EFFECT. PRINCE HARRY IS NO MORE. THAT’S WELL EERIE.

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Taking the waters...by storm

published in THE HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE VOICE Magazine October 2019 for the winter edition

By Karla La Pond Antoinette

This season, the Heath Ponds witnessed two unforeseeable deaths, body disfiguring accidents and the now customary heatwave-induced mayhem. Even President Trump's state visit emitted regrettable repercussions.

On that fateful July Thursday, when temperatures soared to a mind-warping 36 degrees, the Ladies' pond was lauded by one male Heath Ranger as “the only civilised place” (relative to the rest of the Heath), so much so he couldn't bear to relinquish his gate duty there. Our lifeguards cleverly crowd managed the space so that every woman queuing would get at least one quick dip. They simply appealed to women's natural instinct for cooperation by inviting meadow loafers to leave.

Meanwhile, at the mixed sex Lido, gang warfare had erupted by 10am in the restive crowds outside the entrance. Someone glassed a Constabulary officer and the riot police had to be called, during which time a worker at the pool's Moroccan cafe had his arm broken by sun-addled desperados forcing an illegal entry through the back way. By 3pm, 150 people - way above the allowable capacity at the swimming ponds - are cooling off in the very unhealthy boating lake. Rangers and Constabulary abandon all efforts to control the situation and pray for rain which duly arrives at 6pm.

The Swimmers by Natalia Goncharova. The Russian Avant Garde at the Tate Modern. Summer 2019.

Late night illicit assignations prove a dangerous pastime these days. Are the drugs getting worse? A woman on a Tindr date dived in to the boating lake breaking her spine on the shallow bed. Is she ok? Who knows. One month earlier, a man with the same predilection, had his face sliced open by discarded fishing tackle.

Even in daylight at the Ladies, the lifeguards must do A&E. One woman dislocates her knee as she sneekily clamours over the closed wrought-iron back gate while another gets her arse impaled on its' spokes.

Sadly, dozens of outdoor swimming spaces have been shuttered in the Greater London area over the past 40 odd years. With climate collapse, that must change. Bromley Council did briefly open up a pond for swimming in June - rather too prematurely it seems as their inexperienced lifeguards were easily overwhelmed by the crowds. Another revived swimming pond at Bromfield Park in Enfield may soon become reality if the crowd-sourcing efforts of the locals pays off.

And that mango Mussolini fits where, you ask? An unedifying tale to say the least. For two tortuous days, the family of the missing swimmer at the men's had to wait and watch from their heathside, pond-view apartment until the Police Marine Support Unit “frogmen” could be released from their non-essential standby duties for the Prima Donald.

Perspective, please.

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Culture Decanted?

By Karla Le Pond Antoinette

Hampstead Village Voice - SEPTEMBER 2019

At The Pond.  Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies Pond. Contributors: Esther Freud. Deborah Moggach. Margaret Drabble. Jessica J.Lee et al Published in June 2019 by Daunt Books £9.99.

Daunt's anthology is mercifully free of the puff and pretension often poured upon our swimming ponds - usually known as The Highgate Ponds. (Phrases like “nihilistic velocity” by Hannah Jane Parkinson in The Guardian 2019, and “existential singularity” in 'The Ponds' film by Laser Guided Prods. 2019, are cases in point)

This is a delightfully easy and engrossing read judiciously peppered with poetry and erudition. The array of authors encompasses both century classic and nouveau vintages. Perhaps too much youth, say some regular swimmers who also questioned why Daunt Books only offered a £100 bookshop voucher instead of actual prize money for their competition to include an unpublished author. Other misgivings noted that none of the published writers amongst the pond’s swimming fanatics except Esther Freud and Jessica Lee were involved.

The solidarity forged and alliances expressed at the Ladies' are referenced only obliquely and with cool detachment. Yet so much politik-ing has been harnessed to keep the pond open and free these past forty years. But maybe that's another book.

For all women who visit, as well documented here, the Ladies' Pond is a rite of passage no matter what age one starts, even eighty! (Sadly, not for my Hampstead mother - she couldn't bear the cold.)  But passage to what? The word 'magical' appears predictably frequently yet only rarely is an attendant cosmology or mythology even alluded to as in Sharlene Teo's piece 'Echolocation' with her observation of 'matrilineal kinship' amongst the swimmers or in So Mayer's 'swimming is a dip in ritual time' and with Nina Mingya Powles' declaration, 'I have reached a place that is a sacred part of many women's lives'.

Though there are telling tales of courtship and bisexual lust, abortion and pregnant lifeguards, body consciousness and its' discontents, addiction and of course gossip, any anthology is notable not only for what it includes but excludes. One such omission, an obscure short story called 'The Pond' by Jill Cheung in Quim magazine (Issue 4, 1992, London, published by Belliveau & Moorcock) with its' jaw-droppingly explicit lesbian sex would, in truth, somewhat jar with the other material which mainly luxuriates in English loveliness.

Thanks to Google Maps and the infuriatingly incessant, non-permitted Instagramming, our pond is no longer the hidden bucolic idyll it once was. Women's space is necessarily sacred and as such should remain secluded. Let's hope this book, albeit an absorbing and beautiful addition to the swimming prose oeuvre, is the last of any such publicity for a generation.

Anyway, the best stories are told quietly by mischievous lifeguards on a cold wintry day when hardly anyone's about.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association's forty year archive will be deposited with The Bishopsgate Institute in London later in 2019. Includes letters from Glenda Jackson, Roger Deakin, Jeremy Corbyn, & Diane Abbot. Open to all.

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#PondsSoWhite

by Karla La Pond Antoinette

Hampstead Village Voice submission APRIL 2019 (unpublished & unabridged)

This New Year, a phenomenal surge of new winter swimmers unexpectedly followed the launch of 'The Ponds' film (2019), aided no doubt by that weirdly atypical February heatwave. Whatever the arguable merits and demerits of this popular feature length documentary, it's Oh-So-White profiling of all three Hampstead Heath swimming ponds, is an inescapable complexion which director Patrick McLelland cannot deny, try as he does. A local Indian woman approached him to interview her informal swimming group of NW5 habituees, the self-styled 'Kenwood Slappers'. All had their voices heard except she, the only B.A.M.E member.

The film makers' repeated defence that the Kenwood Ladies' Pond Association (KLPA) only sanctioned limited filming access does not embolden their argument. Our segment conveyed a sufficient sense of women's spiritual and playful political solidarity (excluding that nonsensical trans joke) with just four days' worth of footage. Yet our pond is a terrific tapestry of London's variously-melanated females.

To my knowledge, in 30 years, race has never overtly provoked anyone there. Class, gender, sex and even sexual activity, certainly have - though rarely. Swimsuits, for the most part, are a great leveller.

Photographer Ruth Corney being interviewed for The Ponds film (2019) ­Laser Guided Prods Ltd.

This film portrays the swimmers as mostly middle aged, middle class and oh-so-white. That may play in to a romanticised image of Hampstead and Highgate as an olde worlde Anglo-Saxon idyll replete with charming home county types, yet Blacks, Indians and Jews have lived locally for generations even at Kenwood House. For women, the pond is a refugia. A theatre of their sanctity - bodily, spiritual and sexual. The coalitions are sensed inwardly, while the men's are more outwardly. Many feel the Ladies' Pond should remain hidden and inaccessible to preserve its' power. The photography ban at our pond primarily protects religious women's privacy (Jewish and Muslim). But in truth, the rest of us feel like Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter these days. Instagram be damned! Lately, unwanted male ingressions both adult and little boys with their entitled mothers are an increasing annoyance. A sign of the impolite times? Or the felling of former tree cover by The City for their damned Dams Project in 2016? Too much publicity whatever. Dunno what happens at the mixed - apart from two hetero lifeguards meeting and marrying there last year. Lovely.

RELATED LOCAL EVENTS

Until mid-August Burgh House has a wonderful exhibition of the bathing ponds through history; includes vintage home photography, articles, books and stills from the film. www.burghhouse.org.u

On June 20th 2019, Daunt Books launch an anthology of women's pond stories by established writers such as Esther Freud, Margaret Drabble & Deborah Moggach. Our review out in the next issue.

June 2019 - 'City Swimmers' (2006) KLPA's film made with Margaret Dickinson will be re-screened at Highgate's 'Fair on the Square' in tandem with 'The Ponds' film. It documents swimmers' protest against The City's then threat to shut all ponds.  www.klpa.uk

Summer 2019, KLPA's material heritage (photos, articles, artwork & letters from Jeremy Corbyn, Glenda Jackson, Roger Deakin et al) will go to The City Of London's Bishopsgate Archive for all to access.

Visitor at Burgh House's 'Bathing Ponds of Hampstead' exhibition 2019

Addendum:

The film does work on several levels albeit bland ones.

The title is: 'Hampstead Heath: 350 hectares of forest and parkland.' Error number 1. Geologically, it is, in fact, ancient heathland with a managed woodland. Since Saxon times until the 1950's it was an agro-industrial landscape. My father, born locally in 1926 was once a Hampstead Councillor. He remembered walking idly amongst the dozy sheep and I'm not referring to his electorate - at least not knowingly!

There were female breasts on display in the film but no male butts for balance - unless one includes out of focus shots in the background at the nude sunbathing area in the men's changing rooms. No mention of gays at the ladies yet there was at the mens - mostly by straight guys, it seemed. That trans joke was idiotic and shouldn't have been included. (N.B. The BBC TV edit did cut it)

Why did no salaried female lifeguards want to be filmed - they know better.

Also, the music was ghastly. This is Camden! We have a reputation.

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HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE VOICE - MAY 2018

by Karla La Pond Antoinette who is still at the Ladies’ Pond on the Heath.

There has been a hitherto hidden downside to the towering success of the swimmers' campaign against zero-hour contracts for the ponds' lifeguards (HVV exclusive March 2017). Off-season extra labour is now reserved for full-time employees which means that a lot of male lifeguards are pulled off the men's pond to cover sickness and holidays at the ladies. Almost every week, in fact. Not what we bargained for.

New Zealand outlawed zero-hour contracts in 2016. You beaut. They also gave Rights of Personhood to the Whanganui River, a vast arterial waterway that weaves through the North Island. You double beaut. If UK law permitted that for the pond, the sense of indivisible oneness and common 'ownership' swimmers intuitively feel, would be more appropriately reflected in the way the ponds were run - without the heavy, top down, self-congratulatory management style which The Corporation of London excel at, and the horizontalist pond users group (KLPA) are constantly contending. (In 2017, top brass paid themselves bonuses for the Dams Project which was already controversial before the plague of structural problems. Two years later these still beset the new build at the ladies.)

'Potgate', the term humorously devised by the KLPA committee (Kenwood Ladies Pond Association) to describe the saga of 100 donated potted plants illustrates this culture of acute corporatisation. Ground staff and swimmers were delighted with the gift from the Hampstead garden of the late Dr. Joan Casserley only to be told by the new upper tier that the plants were non-native to the heath - just 1 mile from the doctor’s family home of 40 years - and must be removed. Mercifully, grassroots pressure prevailed amidst a lot of pussy-foot placations to the boss man, Bob Warnock. Nota Bene: Egyptian geese, Himalayan parakeets, American yews are also non-native yet inhabit the Heath. Dr. Casserley was a Kiwi.

Dr Casserley (2nd right) enjoying a tea break with fellow medics in 1953. She drank a lot of tea, so claim her family.

Local Journalism..wherefore art thou?

Earlier this year, The Ham & Sigh, or is that the Sham on High, newspaper published verbatim a press release from the Corporation of London on the necessary re-dredging of the mixed pond. No questions asked as to why the previous effort was a failure. Nor that bonuses had been paid for completion of such work. Historically, dredging is only required every 20 years or so.

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Wages for Housework – a new angle

by Annie 'be alive' Besant

Published in Hampstead Village Voice 

It is May 2018. Domestic cleaners have not had a pay increase for over a decade now. In Hampstead, and middle class homes generally, the pay is £9-£10 per hour. No sick pay, no travel expenses, no holidays, no cancellation compensation. No written contracts. No requirement for notice. Literally no job security. The work is physically hard (especially if heaving a cumbersome Dyson vacuum up multiple flights) and socially isolated. Unlike politically-engaged cleaner pressure groups like 3 Cosas at London University, the IWGB (Independent Workers of GB) representing workers at the Royal Opera House and John Lewis, private home domestics can't unionise to better their situation. They are too atomised.

Therefore would bourgeois homeowners generously implement a spontaneous wage increase for their girls? (who are of course grown women but are paid pit pony wages.) 

Members and supporters of Tres Cosas protest in favor of holiday pay, sick pay, and pensions at the University of London, April 2013. (Olga Briasco / The Prisma / Creative Commons)

Higher costs can easily be absorbed by huge numbers of private home employers. A 25% increase to £12.50 p/h is one less cappuccino. Or four for half a day's labour. Or one less new pair of Ferragamos per year (ok, that was my mother's ting. RIP ol' possum).

The middle classes must have cleaners. It's a social imperative. One woman known to me, a West London finance executive, has two cleaners on different days of the week in case one doesn't show. Such is the pressure to be immaculate.

The uniquely British phenomenon of appallingly low wages in a high G.D.P./O.E.C.D. country is well documented. It's one reason Brexit happened. Reveillez Remoaners! Austerity has made the rich richer and the poor totally entrapped.

So, well-heeled Camdenites - set a standard, start a project. You substantially voted in a socialist Labour MP last year and yet again a Labour Council this month. Pay your cleaners a better wage. Imagine The Exterminating Angel if you do not.

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Written Feb 8th for Hampstead Village Voice March issue

ALL ABOARD THE TRANSPHOBIA EXPRESS

by Karla La Pond Antoinette

In light of recent inaccuracies in the Mail on Sunday, which The Sunday Times, The independent, BBC and others lazily replicated, HVV sets the record straight on trans acceptance at the women’s ponds.

(NB: The Guardian did publish an accurate account of the issue in their Friday Feb 9th edition - 1 day after the piece below https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/09/debate-over-inclusion-of-trans-women-in-women-only-spaces-intensifies )

Cross-dressing Hollywood actress Katherine Hepburn swam at the women’s pond.

In 1995, a journalist friend, returning from coverage of the Bosnian war visited the women’s pond for some much-needed R&R. She was handed a leaflet for a ‘drag king’ cabaret in Hackney (where else) by a probable female wearing nothing but a pair of Y-fronts. My friend, who had witnessed severe distress and societal collapse for over a year, burst out laughing saying “Oh wow, how I love London!”

The New Year media frenzy regarding our women swimmers’ alleged transphobic behaviour exposes more about biases and prejudices of the press than of our regulars. No trans women swimmers were actually interviewed or quoted in any of the newspaper articles - thus perpetuating trans invisibility even when their rights are apparently being defended. Yet it is, in essence, the usual sexism that belies the sensationalism. Creating divisions and animosity between women themselves can play right in to the hands of patriarchy. The men’s pond does not get this grief.

Trans women, cautiously discrete as a matter of course, have for years frequented our pond and are well known to the long-standing lifeguard crew who, when needed, eject mocking chancers applying the politics of exceptionalism (even mothers smuggling in their babies and boys are guilty of this). One year, a FTM (female to male) not yet fully post-op but with a double mastectomy wanted to swim topless with his cis girlfriend. On questioning, he claimed he wasn’t welcome at the men’s pond either which was unlikely. He was asked to leave regardless. Allegedly, another FTM is known to swim sneakily in both the men’s and women’s pond. Gender fluidity like no other! Once, a lifeguard was asked to escort off the premises a FTM who exposed his/her flattened chest. When approached, s/he collapsed in tears because they wanted to reverse the transition and inhabit women’s space again. No exit demanded.

Whilst it’s important to acknowledge that the mosaicism of gender and sex is constantly evolving, the challenge for the women’s pond is to find a compassionate, inoffensive way to straddle the needs of all our sub-tribes; orthodox wives, trans, queer, cishets, non-binary et al. We are trying. Many wouldn’t.

Groups are a funny thing. Why does the human experience demand such differentiation?  Would culture suffer without it? Like the problems encountered by international lawyers debating the varying merits of prosecuting war criminals under 'genocide’ or 'crimes against humanity’ (read Hampstead author Philippe Sands’ superb 'East West Street’) the question is for everyone: am I firstly an autonomous individual or a member of a group with my individual traits?

Your thoughts please!

FURTHER READING:

Gender is dead - long live Gender - Aeon online

Labour’s purge of the trans-rights heretics  - The Times

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Published Dec 2017. (Written Oct 2017) HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE VOICE

HEATH HEALTH  by Olga Olyphant – heath habitue since 1926 Recently, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request was sent to the City of London for details of the alleged bonuses paid to the Heath's top brass at the Corporation of London – the asset management wing of The City. Bonuses, they paid to themselves for completion of the highly controversial £23 million Dams Project.

Here is their 'kick in yer teeth' response.

Dear ***, Further to your request which we acknowledged the same day, the City of London (CoL) responds as follows:

Please note that the CoL is not solely a local authority; it has charitable and other related functions as well as public ones. As a result, the work of the CoL is funded from one of three sources which it controls. One is the City Fund (a public, tax-based fund); another is City’s Cash (a combination of funds including endowments which have been built up over the centuries); and the third is charities funding, primarily the Bridge House Estates Fund (which maintains the five City bridges across the Thames), and charities which maintain open spaces in and around London, such as Hampstead Heath. Only City Fund activities, i.e. its functions as a local authority, police authority and port health authority, fall within scope of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Please see the FOIA, Schedule 1, Part II, paragraph 9. For further information about the CoL's finances, budgets and governance arrangements, please see the website at www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/finance. 

Hampstead Heath (like most charities) is therefore outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

What do they mean by “most charities”? That, it is at a charity's discretion whether to volunteer information on bonus or ex-gratia payments to staff?

And the real 'face slapper'...

Please note that, even if this request had been within scope of the Freedom of Information Act, we would have had to consider the provisions of Section 40(2) of the FOIA, which provides an exemption to the disclosure of personal information.

Yours sincerely

Business Manager Open Spaces Department

Nota Bene: The City's turse response was signed anonymously.

As is evident, The City maintain their ancient culture of secrecy with this aloof attitude to full public scrutiny. Why, for goodness sake, are these people in charge of the Heath - one of the most vital public assets in our metropolis? Yet banks, financial institutions and every other local authority council in the land must and do openly reveal the extent of their stipend and bonus payments.

Other uses for the bonus money.

Hire a dedicated cleaner to maintain the ladies' pond new perpetually filthy changing rooms. Or (critically important!) pay the lifeguards more for all the extra cleaning work they have to do.

Restore the garden which was needlessly demolished to make way for the huge spillway. The damp problems we were told it would abolish, are in fact worse. (ED: still true in 2019)

Pay for a new diving board at the men's pond. The old one was removed for some silly film shoot, reinstalled badly and thus rendered unusable. Swimmers were told they'd have to pay £1000's for a replacement. (ED: this has happened Nov ‘17 with The City paying for most of the costs. The swimmers’ Lifebuoys group had to chip in though)

And while they're at it – give the ladies back their diving board too.

Pay to get rid of Bob Warnock the 'public relations disaster' Superintendent of the Heath.

ADDENDUM

Although the Dams Project was seemingly completed on time and on budget, the Ladies Pond still, 18 months later, has 'men at work' almost every month to fix problems with the new build – some jobs now done 3 times over. Bob pays himself a handsome bonus for all this added inconvenience. Nice.

Rise up!

[camdensedimenta]

Published October 2017 Hampstead Village Voice

Hampstead Housing for Homes by Olga Olyphant

(unabridged version)

How many of Hampstead's multitudinous empty properties could well be requisitioned to provide homes for the traumatised survivors of Grenfell's towering inferno.

Here's one: 4 Frognal Close NW3 6YB (opposite University College School) owned by Greek Cypriot travel entrepreneur, George Michalias. Bought for cash during peak-GFC in March 2009 at a 30% discount to its' asking price, the 5 bed classic Bauhaus, designed by Sigmund Freud’s son Ernst (father to Lucien) once homed a family of 7 for 40 years and was itself requisitioned by HM Govt in 1939 at the outbreak of war to become an air raid look-out. It has lain abandoned and neglected these past 8 and a half years. Such a sorry sight. Even squatters wouldn't touch it.

Back elevation 2014. Ceilings collapsed, floors exploded, walls mouldy.

Front elevation and garden view 2008 when on sale

So many landlords cynically allow their properties to rot so that Councils have no choice but to grant permission for demolition and expansion. To add to the iniquity, Guardian live-ins, where they exist, now must pay the owner and not vice-versa as before. (Even pet-sitters who once could command a wage, are now asked to pay rent to owners while they safeguard a zoo and prevent a break-in.)

Camden Council could lead the way nation wide as they have done with the Chalcot Estate evacuations – current tenant grievances not withstanding. See note below regarding the local Fire Brigade. ++

Very punitive fines for houses left empty for more than a year, i.e. 20% above annual rental value

Damn punitive ones for places descending into structural decay - say 10% market value...why not.

Fully utilising legal recourse (EDMOs - Empty Dwellings Management Order) to requisition long term empty private houses for rent to some of the 20,000 on the Council's waiting list, housing association lists et al.

There's so much scope if only the government wasn't so in thrall to the hyper-rentier class who don't even bother to extract rent anymore because doing nothing pays so well in the long run and they, thanks to Quantitative Easing, asset leverage and low interest rates, via an easy splash of tax evasion, can afford to wait while their capital accumulation skyrockets.

CALL TO ALMS! Why do only Kentish Town, South End Green and West Hampstead get squatted or re-purposed these days. Hurry up Hampstead!  There are so many empty places in need of some grass roots activity, 'alt' social spaces, multi-use refugia, pop up galleries, studios...whatever.

++ Rumour has it that Camden Fire Brigade, in a dispute over shuttered stations, refused to honour commitments to council housing emergency evacuations in the wake of the Grenfell Tower inferno. Hence the preemptive move by the Council to force everyone in to the gym nextdoor. Nothing apparently wrong with the cladding at the Chalcots in Swiss Cottage which has proven safe for 11 years unlike Grenfell which combusted within months.

[camdensedimenta]

Published JULY 2017 HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE VOICE  by Karla La Pond Antoinette

(unabridged version) Women bathers are all the rage these days; three new non-fiction books including our very own Jessica Lee’s memoir ‘Turning’, a year long pond-wide doco in production and a frenzied turnout at solstice thanks to an illegal drumming rave which the Heath Constabulary couldn’t shut down.

Nature delivered to our pond, alongside her usual successes, a self-harming Egyptian goose we named Omar, a poor mandarin duckling afflicted with human-induced ’Angel Wing’ and a dying carp. Oh, and the Yorkshire company  who constructed our new dysfunctional changing rooms reportedly went bust. (although Catfoss, the parent company, appear still to be trading)

QUOTE OF THE MONTH On his month-long farewell tour across the surface water, native pond carp, Monsieur Carpe Diem, black with viral disease slides serenely through treading ‘day tripper’ swimmers. Incredulous urbanites shriek in horror: ”Oh my God, is that a fish?”, then swim away at high speed. Yes, girls, this isn’t the lido, you know! (Wait 'til they hear about the rats and water snakes.)

Garden Pond habitue and 'careful lady driver’ delivered 100 potted plants donated from her late parents’ Camden home. Her hasty manouevres left a deep impression…on the hosta.

Lifeguard rock chick Ally the 'Amp'ster impressed by careful lady driver.

Seriously though… since the recent Heath Ranger vehicle collisions with man and also dog, resulting respectively in death and severe maiming, all motors must now have loud reverse beeps and a 'banksman’ (or woman – yeah) in situ. Terror Alert! In the histrionic wake of London 2017’s appalling bridge massacres, the women’s pond found itself subject to Metropolitan Police Terror Unit’s assessment of 'vulnerable’ gates. Why? Who knows. One can feel fear if one chooses. The pond instills a sense of peace in all who visit. The UK Government’s monopoly on violence is the fault line here; an increasingly militarised police, racialised and racist prison system, addictive attachment to autocracies such as Saudi Arabia, copious arms deals to secure UK’s hegemonic brokerage…need I go on…oh wait, I thought we were discussing a gate? Get back in the water, girl. Cycling on the Heath. An unstoppable force. Who? The City Police or cyclists? Veteran pond swimmer and serial cycling fine accumulator Barbara Massey, has launched a campaign to persuade the City of London to be less inimical to 'twowheelsgood’.  As of July 14th she has 150 signatories in support of an end to the The City’s heinous £400 cycling fines (other London boroughs charge £50 if at all, and a speeding ticket in a brain-mashing motor is a mere £65), to provide joined-up Heath cycle lanes with speed limits, & generally be more European cycle centric!  To join, email: budapest_barbara@hotmail.com

Disclaimer The views expressed here are not representative of the real KLPA (Kenwood Ladies Pond Association) membership of 500 agitated watery women – although they may in certain cases by some fluke be similar.

KEY: * The Corporation of London is the land & asset management wing of The City of London, an institution of Vatican-style impenetrability

[camdensedimenta]

Published: March 2017 HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE VOICE by Karla La Pond Antoinette

The theme of this year's KLPA* AGM chimed with 2017's hashtag-friendly feminist mantra 'Nevertheless She Persisted...' (pond swimmers were out in full force at the Women’s March in Piccadilly in January)

Our outgoing Chair, the formidable Jane Shallice exhorted us to congratulate the group on its' phenomenal success in stonewalling the pond's neighbouring mansion-expanding multi-millionaires and The Corporation of London on their corner-cutting connivances.

Most impressive of all is the David and Goliath wrangle with The City of London (Corp's big daddy) to allow seasonal lifeguards the option to reject 'Zero Hour' contracts which have been imposed on them for the last two years, in favour of short term contracts with benefits, sick pay etc. The City, eventually conceded. And this, all the more astonishingly, in the year when 'Zero Hours' hit an all new high in the UK. Lest we forget, The City is one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet and, in the C17th, it practically invented global corporate capitalism – the cause of so much labour 'precarity'. Yet somehow, in that paradoxical space occupied in modern times only by The City functioning as both a huge financial institution and a borough Council, there lurks a discrete sense of the public good. A chink in their corporate armour? Brava Jane and her cohorts for cracking it!  

Non-pond swimmer Heath Superintendent Mr. Bob Warnock (“..who needs friends when you've got Jesus”) descends unannounced and with alarming frequency at the women's pond. His purported purpose amongst all the micro-managing is to ensure that the BAM NUTTAL sign-off is above board. It isn't nor will be. The new spillway is a cesspit breeding an unseasonally-early infestation of midges. Women sat by the hut area must remember to shut their chattering mouths to avoid swallowing the buzzing masses. That's a big ask!

After all the anxious upheaval of the works, nearly a year on the Heath's garden restoration seems to be at an impasse. Women, as before, are taking matters in to their own green hands by donating plants and planting power to revive the pond's famously glorious floriferousness. CALL OUT! Does anyone have recollections of the late Mary Land, a womens' pond habitue? Her family appeal for stories to include in their tree planting dedication ceremony at the pond this May.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH In the nipple-friendly, labia-loving 9 degrees water, a 50-something swimmer shrieks to her friend: “Oh my God, my pelvic floor is like an ice rink.” (Then on exiting the pond) “Gosh, now it's gone into spasm”. Said friend remarks unironically, 'Well, love, enjoy it while you can” Both laugh uproariously. Vivid.

(Kenwood Ladies Pond Association has 500+ members, with 800+ registered for winter swimming)

[camdensedimenta]

Published: SEPTEMBER 2016 HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE VOICE by Karla La Pond Antoinette

(Unabridged version)

According to an anonymous pond source, sub-contractors to BAM Nuttal may now not be paid for the women’s new shower hut construction due to the plethora of defects - most notably, the revolting drainage system which cascades rivers by our feet and stinks to high heaven. Surely these problems originate in the design and with swimmers’ and lifeguards’ vociferous warnings going unheeded.

The new suggestions book, a 80 page A4 hardcover, which must have been bought with high expectation of vigorous use by fastidious determined pens, reveals a curious mix of flattery, frustration and flatulence. More complaints than courtesy, yet it highlights how divided opinions are among the swimmers on their snazy City-named ‘facility’, a word detested by the KLPA*. Don’t like the black exterior colour, do like it. Don’t like the exposing unfrosted glass in shower room, do like it. Who to please? Who to ignore?

For me, the monumental black box prefab design is more appropriate for an antipodean city beach such as in Wellington or Sydney, not a mostly wild heathland where the backdrop of London can barely be seen. And the mere fact that The City keeps referring to the new project as a 'facility’ sends shivers down the collective swimmers’ spine. Too corporate, too posed, too hierarchical and demanding. The City’s long-desired tollbooth can’t be far in to the future given their adamantine advocacy of changes to the 1871 Heath Act, currently running through parliament which will permit greater revenue raising powers. Entry fees, for example - hitherto avoided thanks to a full frontal legal assault by the KLPA. (Read history from 10 years ago.)

Other problems;

In late August, while attempting to exit up the steps, a swimmer severely gashed her leg on the hidden loose underwater wires of the poorly rendered solid concrete decking. She had to be carted off in an ambulance and couldn’t walk for a week. Again, The Pond Resistance (KLPA plus lifeguards) were not in favour of a such decking but the pencil-pusher, non pond-swimmer superintendent Bob insisted otherwise for reasons unknown. Did it really need replacing? Couldn’t we have done as Professor Rachel Armstrong recommends with Sinking Venice, using experimental living architecture that repairs itself. https://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_armstrong_architecture_that_repairs_itself?language=en

Other surface parts of the concrete decking are already disintegrating. BAM assured us at meetings last year that it would last 70-80 years.

DRAINAGE: Mobile phones, swimmers’ shoes etc falling down the exterior drains which edge the entire building – a truly bizarre design feature.  Now compost is accumulating there and at hose-down time it stinks in the way nettles do when left overnight in water. However, it sure clears the deck quickly at closing time.

Design is so bad it is inconceivable how anyone, never mind a professional, could construe it as workable. People flow, audio flow are awful. The winter winds will be fiercer inside the hut area with such high walls.

Noise pollution from enormous shower room fan machine. Previously, we had a window wot opened. Ventilation enough. Noiseless too.

Disabled shower seat has now broken down twice in 3 months - possibly on the only 2 occasions that a disabled person has actually sat there. It now resembles a crime scene. (see pic) Bummer, (pun intended) as this now means we have only 1 hot shower. Thank heavens for the August heatwave, but autumn chills are looming.

The contracted Architect recently inspected and observed with regret that the windows from the lifeguard kiosk were higher up the frame than in their original template, thus undermining the sight-line to discern whether a swimmer is waving or drowning. Gawd help us. Impossible to rectify now until some pesky teenage arsonists do their worst which they have reliably achieved with our 2 former wooden changing rooms. Hence, why concrete was chosen in the 1991 build.

Planting scheme. Lower meadow and upper meadow replanting fiasco – not maintained and now riddled with weeds. More wasted money. The City is, as of late summer, laying out full turf in other areas surrounding the women’s pond at the most horticulturally inappropriate time of the year – that is, without rain.

The lifeguards now must do insanely long cleaning jobs on a building twice the size of the previous, and highly prone to stinky dirt accumulation.

Change is always inevitable but the heath and ponds seemed resistant to the encroaching corporcracies of C21st London. Hampstead Village is now overrun with paranoid business types who barricade themselves in their fortress houses and its’ High Street but a tepid stream of vain fripperies.

The remorseless reconfiguration of the beloved Heath (see https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tessies-hope) by so-called managers, eradicates generations of memories, fond and fiendish familiarities. Where 'tearing off tights with my teeth on the heath’ kinda moments are contoured with parental deathly departures. Landscape and mind intertwined. The continuum of life. A £23 million dam fixes what exactly?

KEY

K.L.P.A. stands for Kenwood Ladies Pond Association with support from 500 women swimmers. It is responsible for so much good in maintaining the wonderousness of the pond compound.