Slow Lane

This morning I went for a swim at my local leisure centre. Women’s only hour. It was busy, the fast lane full of eager goggled faces, flexed then pointed toes, front crawls. I briefly eyed up the middle lane, the quietest of the three but no. My body instinctively walked me straight into the familiar warm stretch of chlorinated water, separated only by a single floating rope and signalled with a capital lettered sign at either end - the slow lane.

Oh slow lane I know you well.

This summer some of my oldest, dearest friends married, bought houses (first / second), announced pregnancies (first / second) and promotions with salaries that I can only compare to the number I imagined infinity was when I was a kid. Most of my news was less jubilant (see previous Substacks) and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish I was in a different lane. Goggles on, swim hat hugging tight to my skull, streamlined legs, doing length after length for the full hour rather than doing a leisurely 45 minutes, taking a long hot shower, then heading out to the cafe to write.

In the slow lane an older woman with a bright green swim hat lets me go on in front of her. I smile. Another, with a stack of delicate gold chains around her neck moves into the middle lane to stop the pile up. I keep going, breaststroke, no goggles, hair tied up on top of my head, no swim cap.

When I was eighteen I went to study fashion and worked in it for a short period, assisting on shoots with Ciara, Tom Ford, Nick Knight, Carine Roitfeld to name a few (not bragging honest). The funny thing is, reflecting upon it, it was the absolute antithesis of slow lane. And it wasn’t for me. My body said no. It dragged me straight out of that choppy water and back into the smooth, gentle lull of the slow. With my diagnosis I had no choice but to slow the f down.

Of course I get those pangs, seeing others experience life events that socially we are programmed to see as THE big life goals (marriage/ getting on the property ladder etc etc) and at points I do wish I had some of those too. But I’ve realised that moving at a slower pace, sometimes out of choice, other times out of necessity has offered me some lessons. It allows me the space to be more observant, of myself and of the world around me. It has meant I have more of an understanding of my body and honouring times when I need to rest, rather than constantly caffeinating to get through the daily grind and overriding the needs of my natural monthly cycles. Being forced into the slow lane after the fast lane of my fashion years made me rediscover my writing practice. And writing in itself is a kind of slow lane, a retreating, a stopping to notice, how to encapsulate that sunset, that kiss, that heartbreak in words rather than quickly moving on to the next thing. How to hold a moment in time, to immortalise it, to really feel it fully and let others feel it with you.

‘writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers’ - Salman Rushdie

This week, I shared a prompt in my creative writing workshops inspired by Olive Franklin’s poem ‘Days End’. The final few lines read;

& when you take my face
between your hands like something you’ve forgotten

I think— I did not waste my life.

(full poem here: https://www.berlinlit.com/days-end/ )

For the first part of the prompt I asked everyone to write a list of all those little moments day to day that make you think ‘I did not waste my life’. Focusing on small rather than big. Everyone went round and shared one thing from their list and when I tell you, it brought tears to my eyes. With permission here is just a snippet:

‘the last minute baking of a birthday cake’

‘picking up the phone with nothing significant to say, just to hear each other’s voice. The comfort of the routine. The soft strength of friendship’

‘the cat jumping on the bed at night to signal its time to sleep’

‘the robin watching me turn soil’

‘the light in summer coming through my bedroom window at 7.30am and lighting up my face as I wake up’

In the spirit of slow lane energy I offer you this prompt right now if you’d like it. Find a fresh page in your notebook or if you don’t have one, the back of a napkin or your hand will do!

Take a minute to think about what your list might be made up of. The moments that make you think ‘I did not waste my life’. Those moments that might seem insignificant to others but are everything for you. You might not share it on insta or tell your colleagues about it and expect champagne or a John Lewis gift voucher. But it is a moment that is fully yours, that makes you feel grateful to be alive, a feeling being.

In the slow lane women give way to each other, two rest their elbows on the side and chat and laugh, another grabs a float and splashes her legs as if she were a young child, another begins a length of backstroke. I wait for a round, watching them all go by before joining in the flow of it all again.

Before my swim I was frustrated that I didn’t have the energy to get up early and write, I wasn’t sure I had anything inspiring to write about but then… the gentle breaststrokes, the ‘you go first’, you sure?’, the gathering of elders in the cafe catching up about their growing ailments then heading to the gym together, the towels hung over the shower doors, the collection of flip flops gathered at the pools edge and then the writing came, it flooded in, it spilled over.

All those tiny, huge moments that make up a life.