So where would you like to go on your birthday?

I love my birthday. Right on the middle of the year. And the weather – today’s a fine example – is always glorious. So today I’d love to go to Kingsbury Swimming Pool. It was a big outdoor lido where I spent many happy hours. Everyone would be there. In an era before cheap foreign holidays, Mums would pack picnics and stay all day. Dads would join their families after work and there always seemed to be a freckly ginger-haired kid bombing off the top board. Today I’m yearning to be back there around the time that this song was in the charts. Sadly, the British climate made these hot Kingsbury days rarer than I choose to remember, so the pool closed years ago. There’s nothing there now, nothing at all. The site of Kingsbury Pool has been grassed over as if it never existed. And I’m now beginning to wonder if it ever did.