On Wednesday I joined my friend Laura for a swim at the newly opened Kings Cross Pond. It describes itself as an ‘art installation you can swim in’. Which is ironic given that last week I was stood outside an art gallery in Roubaix that used to be a swimming pool. I could neither swim there or look at art.

The pond is in the middle of the building site that is the area north of Kings Cross Station. I cycled past here for the past two years on my way to work and have seen buildings spring up.

One of my colleagues at work said the other day: “London will be great when it’s finished.” It made me chuckle and I think about it now whenever I see a road closed or being dug up and buildings being torn down and rebuilt.

For the time being though, in the middle of all this chaos there is a small spot of calm where something very un-London is happening.

We met at the pool at 7:30, were given a brief briefing (showers over there – please shower to keep the water balanced, lockers are over there – here’s a padlock and key, changing cubicles are over there, the water is 17C today) and put our cossies on ready to swim.

After a bit of hugging of the steps, I got in and found the water to be quite pleasant once you’re in. I did a length of the pool with my face up. When I put my face in I was surprised the bottom of the pool was lined and clean – I’d been expecting mud.

There were two guys determinedly doing lengths of front crawl down the centre of the pool while the rest of us splashed around, did a bit of breaststroke to look up at the building around us and chat.

I chatted to Laura and we noticed something odd happening – people who didn’t know each other were chatting. Londoners wearing very little were talking to each other early in the morning and saying how lovely it was to be swimming.

After 15 minutes of swimming we got out to go find hot coffee and cycle into work. We left those two guys still plugging up and down. Everyone is entitled to swim as they like, but to me, this isn’t the pool to be looking to clock up swim yardage in. It’s not that long for a start. Lift your head up, stop at the end, have a chat, maybe with (gasp) someone you don’t know.