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    A crucible for joy

    Dec 27, 2018 5 minutes

    REVIEW - FRANCES WALSH

    Swim: A Year of Swimming Outdoors in New Zealand

    Annette Lees

    Potton & Burton, $39.99

    Annette Lees has written a charming almanac, in which she details 365 consecutive swims around New Zealand, one taking place on January 6 at Te Henga/ Bethells Beach: “Early swim. Rising tide. Sea alive. Surf’s up.”

    The quotidian record is interspersed with snippets, facts and tales of waterways and swimming — outdoor swimming that is, “not its distant cousin: pee-warm, chlorine-soaked indoor-pool swimming”. For only outdoor swimming, writes Lees, provides “that singular crucible for joy and fear that so refreshes our soul”.

    One or two of Lees’ swims, it has to be said, would seem not to technically qualify as such, but readers will admire her feint. Her diary entry from August 21 reads: “The flu rages. I can hardly leave the couch, let alone the house. A swim seems out of the question. So I fill the bath with

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