The pool fence yarn

I went to poetry tonight.

I do love a good poetry evening.

It is a mix of ages and people and everyone is there for the joy of words and connection.

Ah.

It's a bit like blogging but shorter and more immediate.

It's also a bit over two hours of me time once a month.

Ah.

And I get to share it with 'Salina.

Ah.

We are looking online at offerings of houses still.

We are holding powder until the right stars align - those meteors last week must have scrambled them.

One I saw recently had a swimming pool.

Hooray I hear some say but I know that (a) with such delights comes very hard work and (b) that was one ugly pool.

I grew up with a rectangular pool. Dad - or was it the husband of a relative? Anyhow he and a mate had met a guy in the pub who used to build pools on cruise ships - and for a non-taxable sum, a place to stay and to get fed for the duration he worked with Dad to build our pool.

We were the only ones in the area who had one when I was little.

Not that that meant our house was "the neighbourhood hang" - geography was too vast and everyone had a dam or tank to suffice.

But it did mean that there was always an option for a swim.

The technology involved with the pool was a hit'n'miss pump and a hose.

The pool was pumped from the river. As moss grew on the sides and the steps, we had stiff brushes to scrape them - and as scum and decaying leaves would form scabs upon the surface we had nets on long handled to scoop the pool.

Various chemicals were mixed with beakers of water and compared in the shadows against numbered charts of colour, and the resultant formula for clear waters sprinkled across the surfaces and swirled through.

The depths of the deep end and beneath the stairs were still freaky places I would not ever dare to venture to. I did not care that I was considered a wimp because I knew the truth.

I was a smart wimp.

The things to watch out for was slimy strings of amphibious eggs, black insects with hard beetle shells and hands of sharpened pincers, dead animals and toads.

Cane toads are ugly.

They are especially ugly when eyeballing you from between you and your exit from the pool.

Luckily there were two exits - the wooden stairs in the corner of the shallow end and the ladder - and I believe that it taught me to swim faster - both teaching and swimming faster - that very healthy fear of the cane toad.

They were in the pool DESPITE the 2 foot high pool fence directly past the concrete edge of the pool that's sole purpose was to deter toads from gaining access.

Should the bottom of the deep end get so murky and full of sludge that even the cane toads were coming up for fresher sir, the hit'n'miss would fire up and the next 14 hours - with intermittent orders poolside to scrub and calls of "how much fuel" and "is it blocked" while the water levels lowered and the sludge became more concentrate.

The next morning was old clothes, rubber boots and shovels as buckefuls of sludge were winched and dispensed to wheelbarrow and hence down the hill back towards the river.

There was a rectangular sinkhole at the far edge of the deep end where the last of the sludge was swept towards.

Then cracks reputtied and all sides repainted and sundried before the next cycle of pumped water re-entered the pool.

To quote the old man, you knew that you were alive when you hit the water in the morning for a few laps - or in the case of this particular wimp, you were alive after your Dad had had his "cold wash" and disposed of all cane toads.