Tooting Bec Lido opened today for the much-delayed first swim of the summer. I was one of many who spent Monday hovering on the overwhelmed website trying to book a ticket – and with success. So at 10.55am this morning I rode down on my bike, had my name checked off against a list of bookings, and followed the marshal’s instructions for the new socially-distancing lido protocols.

It’s online booking only and you are limited to a 45-minute slot, free to members of the South London Swimming Club, or £7.90 for non-members. It’s all quite regimented with lane-swimming only. On arrival, I was asked whether I was ‘fast’, ‘medium’ or ‘slow’ and allocated a socially distanced queue for one of eight lanes.

Having been told to come ‘swim-ready’, cubicles not in use, we stripped off to our swimsuits and were then led round the pool to leave our belongings spaced out along one side; then led all the way round the one-way system to the other side to get into the water.

The eight lanes are across the 33m width of the pool and only the shallow end was in use this morning; the vast expanse of deep-end water stretched out tantalisingly beside us, undisturbed and unused. Meanwhile, between six and eight people per lane began swimming back and forth.

I was a little anxious as to whether I’d chosen the correct lane; I’d said ‘slow to medium’ when asked my preference, but seemed to have been put in one of the fast lanes. It was fine, but I definitely felt a pressure to keep up my speed and not to spoil it for anyone else by getting in their way. “It’s quite intense,” said a fellow swimmer as we both took a break at the edge part-way through.

But despite the constraints of the new regime, it was wonderful to be in the water. In the midst of the London heatwave, with the temperature reaching 34 degrees every day for nearly a week, nothing could beat the feeling of plunging into the sparkling water and moving through its coolness.

Towards the end of the 45 minutes a few people got out of my lane and I swam a few widths almost oblivious to others as it was possible to swim with more distance between us – usually one of the joys of swimming in the lido’s huge expanse of water. The sun was strong, bouncing off the water and lighting up the coloured doors of the not-to-be-used cubicles lining the edge.

At 11.45am a whistle blew and we obediently got out, dried and put our clothes on over swimming costumes, meandered towards the exit, savouring each last moment, forming a happy stream of people trickling back out onto the parched grasses of Tooting Bec Common. It was strangely moving to be part of an almost-silent distanced crowd, knowing we’d all just shared sensations we’d been thirsting for these last few months.

It’s the lido, but not as we no it. No sunbathing or lolling about on the side. No family groups having picnics under the trees. No teeneagers larking about or striking poses for their friends. No chips, icecream or anything else to eat as the cafe’s closed.

But I will be back.

I’m making face-masks out of old T-shirts. As the government has stopped dithering and made face-masks compulsory in shops as well as on public transport, we are going to need a supply. I don’t want to be adding to the plastic waste in the oceans, so I’m hoping my family can be persuaded to use washable re-usable ones. So far, they haven’t been too keen.

For the style-conscious teens, I might need to splash out on cooler designs; I fear my random bits of T-shirt material don’t pass the embarrassment test. It’s got to be something they want to wear – or they just won’t.

And now that lockdown has fizzled out, it’s become harder to get them to take precautions. Are they hand-washing as much as they did at the start? Are they really staying a metre or two apart when they meet friends? Almost certainly not when they are playing football or basketball.

Life outside the home is resuming, albeit in a new form.

I drove to north London to walk with a friend in Highgate Woods at the weekend. It was the first time I’ve crossed the river since early March and it felt like quite an adventure. The journey was long and slow; widened pavements to make space for more pedestrians mean narrower roads for those of us travelling inside a tonne of metal.

After four months of sticking mainly to SW2 and SW16, it was strangely exciting to pass by the capital’s landmarks again; I can report that the MI5 building is still there; as is Victoria station; Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch. In our lockdown lives, our physical worlds had shrunk. I was struck by how in life before lockdown, the ability to travel was something I took for granted. It’s one of the privileges of affluent 21st century life that we don’t notice until it’s gone.

While shops, pubs, swimming pools are all now opening, my yoga classes will stay closed. Instead I will be teaching classes online for the forseeable future. My little home studio, where I normally teach up nine people at a time, isn’t large enough to space people out. The loss of income from this – and retreats – is considerable. And it’s the same story for millions of other families. We know we are heading for a deep recession.

So the chancellor ‘Dishy Rishi’ Sunak, is keen to get us out spending. He has been filmed waiting tables in Wagamama and from August will be offering us half-priced meals at restaurants up and down the land.

In Streatham, I’ve been trying to give some custom to our local charity and gift shops, but it isn’t always easy to stay distanced in the smaller spaces inside these little, independent stores.

We have also booked a table at Bar 61 – our local restaurant-bar – for younger son’s forthcoming birthday. We’d be heartbroken to see Bar 61 go under, having had one of our first dates there more than 20 years ago – and celebrated many family occasions there since. We all want and need our local businesses to stay in business. But already, the live human experiment of easing lockdown is showing some worrying results. New Covid-19 infections are beginning to rise again.

According to the Covid Symptom Study, run by King’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, some 25,356 people had symptomatic Covid-19 on 13th July, a figure that has been rising since 7th July. The R number, which needs to stay below 1 to indicate that the spread of the virus is reducing, is now 1.1 nationally and 1.3 here in London.

At the start of lockdown, there was a sense of community spirit; we were all battening down the hatches together to weather a storm. But now, four months in, we’re being allowed out again even though it’s still raining. It’s very unsettling.

The blossoms of Streatham Hill are so brilliant. Some are delicate and subtle, others frilly, lacy, blousey. I’ve been getting a cricked neck from taking pictures of them on my daily walks to and from school this week.

A.E. Housman

The Loveliest of Trees:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.