Anyway. That’s where the hot pool comes in.
While I’ve never really been a big fan, I confess this past week, the hot water has helped. You could say the temple that is my body remains open for worship.
As for the soothing effects of a supposedly relaxing soak on my mind, well, that’s another story.
And it is all coming down to the company I have been keeping.
I should perhaps quickly explain that the pool I have been using is open to the elements, and other users.
If you time it just right, you can get a nice, peaceful therapeutic soak with the pool all to yourself.
Get it wrong and you’re likely to find a stray cruddy foot kicking you in the shin under water and/or, for example, an ideological political debate guaranteed to send already tired brain cells into a spin.
I know, because that’s what I’ve had to endure this week.
I’ve worked hard for five days.
Not full days obviously,
I mean Mrs P still requires me to take her for a walk, shower her with love and affection and patiently wait outside op shops while she buys another item of clothing she apparently can’t do without. That all takes time.
So let’s say I’ve maybe worked four hours a day and headed for the pool after each shift.
On day one, a kid threw a ball over the fence, which hit me in the head. So that sort of put a dampener on things.
On day two, at a different time, I discovered some sort of women’s aquarobics class had been cancelled so they’d all piled into “my” pool for a natter instead. I can tell you it’s a strange feeling being “checked out” by 12 pairs of octogenarian eyes when you get out of the pool and walk past them. By the third time I had strutted, er, I mean walked, past, I was feeling kind of objectified. Ahem.
Day three saw me go for a dip just before tea. That’s when I sat down slap in the middle of the political debate.
I managed to slowly drift to the other end of the small pool where a lady was laying back, eyes closed, shoulders back, in her own private sanctuary. I was just getting into my own tranquil state when she decided enough was enough, opened her eyes and started firing back her own political views.
I left them to it, very quietly, when they started to blame punks – yes, that’s right, punks as in punk rockers – for the world’s current chaos.
So then, on day four, I took Mrs P with me. Just after tea to see if it was any quieter. Unfortunately, our visit coincided with that of a gentleman who had, shall we say, hydrated way too much at the local watering hole and was acting in less than a chivalrous fashion towards my fair lady.
Naturally, one protects their beloved in such a situation – even though I reckon a straight jab to the chin from Mrs P would have knocked the sleaze out of this toerag – and I had to move in between he and her.
And while I would have liked to have stuck one on him myself, seriously, experience tells me you can’t reason with such idiots, physically or verbally, so we opted to leave instead.
So that brought me to day five.
The place closes at 7.30pm, so I went half an hour before that.
There’s no one there.
I get changed and ease myself into the luxurious warm waters. It is bliss. I stretch out and dip my shoulders under. Heaven. Hot, relaxing heaven.
Thirty seconds in, I can tell this will have been well worth the wait.
I close my eyes and just as the warmth begins to invade my tired, aching neck muscles, a voice emerges from the darkness.
“Sorry mate. You’ll have to get out. We’re closing early tonight for maintenance.”
