Pool Watch No. 1

Exactly a week ago, in the midst of the most recent spell of fabulous weather (we've had a break but today things have improved and this week promises to be hot 'n' sunny) the Fat Bastard was offered a swimming pool. Not an inflatable but one step up from that, one of those pools that has a rigid frame over which a liner is fitted, a pool with filter etc. A couple of feet deep. Perfect for cooling off in, though not exactly something to swim in (not for someone who spent years hacking up and down the 50m pool at the Balwyn Baths).

He said yes. Then he asked me if I thought there was somewhere in our jungle garden we could actually put the thing up. I pointed out to him the bit of ground that was most suitable and what work would have to be undertaken (clearing, levelling, etc).

He collected the disassembled pool and fittings during the afternoon, got them home and began the job of clearing. He cleared a wide open approximately circular space and piled what he'd cleared up to one side. I directed him towards the rubble sacks that evening. The rubble sacks are still where they were a week ago, the rubble and weeds are still where he left them (a whole new crop are stirring just beneath the soil as I write), the ground is still uneven and the pool is still a disassembled heap along the side of the house.

I'm no psychic but I predict that unless I intervene and finish job we'll get to the end of August and the pool will be exactly where it is today.

Do I sound like a kill-joy? Well if we get the damned thing up I've got a summer of cleaning the damned thing up, getting it down at the end of the summer and storing it away somewhere for a following summer I can't afford to accept I'll still be living here for.

Expect more pool updates throughout the summer as it [the pool] gathers dust, spiders, leaves, bird crap, rainfall and then deteriorates.