Laura Craik on sensible swims at the Ladies’ Pond, Karlie’s summer of splendour and secret smokers

'August is always a letdown,’ people say, only this year they’re saying it hopefully while doing a rain dance.

By now, they have completely run out of beer gardens to sit in, parks to picnic in and lidos to swim in, bored of every al fresco experience that in February seemed so enticing. No, I don’t want to come to your BBQ. Put it away. Its burnt embers are a metaphor for my brain, chargrilled beyond all recognition by weeks of heat exhaustion and alcohol abuse. That burger you prod? That’s my soul. No. My liver.

Every blade of grass has turned to straw, so itchy to sit on that I worry I’ve contracted smallpox, which maybe I have, given I’ve been on the Tube (current temperature: Hades). There was nothing else for it but to summon my courage, wax my body, make peace with seeing the naked changing room libertines and head to Hampstead Ladies’ Pond.

God, but it’s beautiful. You forget. Naturally, I whipped out my iPhone X to take a picture, the notion of enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous swamp weed without anyone on Instagram knowing about my valiance simply too crushing to bear. ‘Sorry, you can’t take photos here,’ said a lifeguard. ‘But I have a blue tick,’ I shouted. I didn’t. I’m not that much of a dick. Presumably, the same rules don’t apply to Kendall Jenner, who surfaced on Instagram last week in a video showing her swimming happily in the same location. ‘A POND!!!’ fans commented. ‘SO BRAVE.’

Is it, though? Once you get used to alien objects brushing against your legs, it’s divine. To be at one with nature is rare in a city full of 8.136 million short-tempered people. Besides, ducks don’t grumble in the heat. Given my local lido has been blighted by antisocial behaviour (fights breaking out among disgruntled queuers who can’t believe they’re not the only people seeking solace in a pool), it really isn’t ‘brave’ to swim in Hampstead Ponds. It’s the most sensible option.

World Kloss

Karlie Kloss is engaged to long-term boyfriend Josh ‘My Brother Is Married To Ivanka Trump But Let’s Not Mention That’ Kushner. Frankly, I’m amazed he managed to pin her down long enough to propose. For if there’s one thing we’ve learned this summer, it’s that no celebrity vacation can take place without the beneficent presence of Karlie, a woman who is to luxury holidays what unicorn pool floats are to we lumpen proles. Here she is, quad biking in the Jordanian desert with Ellie Goulding and Princess Beatrice! Here she is again, boating in the Mediterranean with Paul McCartney and Misha Nonoo! Who dis on a yacht off the Sicilian coast? Why, it’s Karlie again, this time with Diane von Furstenberg, Dame Natalie Massenet and Harry Styles! What a glorious time to be alive. If you’re Karlie.

Secrets and Isles

I was always suspicious at how the Love Islanders, so unrestrained in so many ways, never seemed to get hammered, but were always filmed sipping daintily on the wine with which they were constantly plied over their eight weeks in the villa. Obviously, the nights where they were carried, comatose and drooling, to their beds weren’t filmed — just like their smoking, which occurred in a designated smoking shelter set away from the villa. Would that everyone had such privacy. As the warm weather rages on, London’s secret smokers continue to be outed: something about the sunshine leads them to be less cautious than usual. Don’t do it, people. And if you must, don’t let the kids see.