Right through the winter the pool looked rather tantalising, a promise of balmy summer days to come, with children frolicking in the blue and parents hopping in to refresh themselves after toiling in the flowerbeds. Ha!
The moment the weather started to warm up, the pool started to turn green. The pool man eventually came, but without any wares to flog to us (what recession? does no-one want our business?) and he’s been almost impossible to contact since.
While we waited for the promised chemicals the pool went green, and greener, and greener.
I did get as far as trying to work out which chemicals we might need and where we might buy them, but couldn’t decide if the pool counts as outdoor or indoor: it’s cold, but the room gets hot (like the greenhouse it should probably be) and though it doesn’t get all the strange stuff landing in it that perhaps an outdoor pool would, it’s not exactly pristine. Basically, I got bored. And time dragged on. And the pool got greener. And the pool man didn’t call back.
Though Ian doesn’t want to keep the pool, he agreed that the swamp it was becoming was not in his top ten of alternative uses and eventually he took on the case and boxes and boxes of chemicals began to enter the house and then the pool.
But there comes a time that you weigh it all up and realise the 30 quid or so that it will take to refill the pool is a lot cheaper than the chemicals you’ve chucked into the “spinach soup” over the last few days. So Ian began the heroic work of emptying the pool and every half hour or so brushing off more of the mould growing beneath the old waterline. At 1am he eventually declared the pool empty enough that we could climb in and start to clean the bottom.
We made a motley pair, Ian in his budgie smugglers and wellies, me in waterproof trousers and wellies, scrubbing away in the eerie green spotlight while the water sloshed around our feet. Since we first saw the pool it’s had a nasty rim of mould around the top so we set to scrubbing that too, me with a long-handled broom and Ian with a rather more appropriate scrubbing brush. I was exhausted. I’d been falling asleep even before we started and though the pool doesn’t look so big when you’re swimming it, it’s bloody enormous when you work your way round it inch by mouldy inch.
Ian proved himself the more heroic of the two of us, removing black that had defeated me, tackling the corners, and scrubbing well after my spasming exhausted fingers had me whimpering my way to the steps.
The pump began to struggle without sufficient water in its system so we concluded the last many bucketloads of water should be removed by hand. No easy task. A combination of scoops and sponges and squirters got the water from the bottom of the pool into a weeding bucket into which Ian could then plunge a bucket that he could lift out of the pool for me to pour down the drain. Ruth was heroic working tirelessly to fill the weeding buckets. She didn’t give up, even when left to work alone for a while, till the pool was empty.
That was the point at which I concluded we’d dislodged so many paint flecks that we should hose down the walls and floor… and of course that water too needed scooping up again. Again, Ruth leapt in to help. She was inexhaustible. Child labour is certainly underrated.
Finally we could refill the pool. Perfect timing. It was the hottest of hot days and working round the pool had us all as red and shiny as the tomatoes that the pool’s glass roof was clearly designed to nurture. As soon as we turned on the hose, the girls stripped off and clambered in to play. The pool filled with balls and floats and water guns and the shrieks of summer making it all worth while.
Ruth swims almost daily, if not more. She loves it. She skinnydips before school or as soon as she’s home from school and is in heaven. Oriana is a little more hesitant - the pool's still very cold. But she loves the excuse to add another outfit to her daily wardrobe – suit, sun top, hat, goggles and armbands essential whatever the weather and whether or not she actually ever gets wet. As for actually swimming, I'm sure she’ll get there in the end.
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