Warming Up

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Wednesday 8th January 2003

About a year ago when I was swimming in Balham pool, I noticed that a blue float had somehow got lodged up in the roof. It was stuck fast between a girder and a big ventilation pipe, twenty or thirty feet above the pool. I remember thinking then that it must have taken some kind of throw, not only to get the float that high up, but also for it to lodge itself securely into that tiny space.
I wondered how they were going to get it down again.
The answer is that they still haven’t. It’s still there and I look at it every time I pass (when I am doing back stroke anyway) and to be honest, I don’t think it’s good enough. They should be spending the 36p a week extra that I’m now giving them to pay someone to retrieve it.

I say that, but I would be quite sad if it went. It’s like an old friend, poking its blue tongue out at me from the rafters. Like my own personal little grey-haired bloke in Rocky, telling me not to give in, to push it a bit further.

Perhaps, like the ravens in the Tower, Balham pool will fall into ruin if ever the blue float is dislodged. Or perhaps the new Arthur will be revealed, when he (or she, you sexist) is able to pull it from its metal prison. To be honest, more likely the new King (or Queen, haven’t you learnt from the previous parentheses? Hitler!) Arthur (or Martha) is the one who got it up there in the first place. A hundred men could throw a hundred floats for a hundred years and not manage to achieve the same result. Now if we could only find the unruly, hyperactive child who did it....