We’re all in it together aren’t we? This great swimming pool of life, plying the lanes, up and down in monotonous daily routines, exercising our rights to breathe. Life waits for  no-one- you’ve just got to dive right in – even if you can’t swim – you soon find out. At the deep end you might flail a bit as the soothing cool waters strip the day of its ferocity, the jackal on your tail, but it could turn to panic and mayhem as you can’t float then reach out for the sides – oh shit I’m going under, blurgling sounds come out of your mouth, the sky above goes all wobbly  and indistinct, you hear nothing but your scream, a push and a struggle and your above the surface, threshing for life, splashing with all the others.

Some are more in control than you – or appear to be so. Some are tuned into the Karmic flow, lapping up and down, somehow managing to remember to breathe out underwater and breathe in with their head above. This doesn’t happen for me. I take in gobfuls of chlorinated acid at inopportune moments while I try to co-ordinate the strokes and I stop and choke and start to sink under the surface again, the familiar panic – down toward the aquamarine bottom, the thick black lines that divide the lanes,  then struggle up again and reach out for the tiles along the side, the curvy bar where the water laps and gurgles before being recycled.

There’s kids on the high board bouncing it like a trampoline – launching into the air in a ball to create huge ‘huclkebuck bombs’. Water splashes out from the small thermo nuclear explosion that’s just occurred. The voices, the voices stop the madness, they seem to be suspended somewhere up above the water trapped in a blimp. Time for a Sunny Boy  or a Razz- a block of flavoured frozen water- so simple and idea sugared water frozen almost as clever as ‘bottled’ water.