InTouch Magazine Articles Archive

Issue 21, August 2008

Bathing Beasties

By Brian Hodgkinson.

Don’t you just love your swimming pool? The joy of rising on a spring morning, the sun beginning to shine through the trees; the birds singing at the prospect of a wonderful day; and of sliding into the cool still water (no need for a pump at this early hour to disturb the neighbours or wake the wife). To leisurely dog-paddle a few lengths, easing the tensions of yesterday, cleansing the body and mind ready for whatever today has to offer, and then just to float for minutes on end in the benison of clean, clear water.

Or is reality rather different? You stumble outside, grimy and gritty from a bad night – hoping to have a refreshing swim – and what do you find? The bloody pool is full of critters. Beasties. All the fauna of the neighbourhood have elected to drown themselves in your own personal relaxation environment. You can’t use the ladder into the water because of the huge numbers of spiders lying inert on the tiles at the foot of the rungs. And they might not all be dead – some might be merely shamming, just lying in wait. And then – bang! they’d have you!
If it’s not spiders, its moths. They don’t sink, like the heavyweight spiders do – they float around on the surface – forming a layer of soft down which gets in your face as soon as you try to swim. And then you realise that they are not fully drowned – they flap ineffectually, trying to rise out of the surface tension of the water, floating around in frenzied circles, with one wing soaked and water-logged and the other frenetically waving.

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