After Christmas we bought a blow-up pool from Kmart. It cost $60. Legally, you should have bought the fencing as well, but we decided to throw regulatory caution to the wind. (And we can’t afford a fence.) We live in a Chippendale terrace and we put the pool in our brick-paved courtyard.

Including traffic it takes about an hour to get to the beach from our house, so the pool allows us to have a beach-side lifestyle without any of the effort. It’s shabby, and deflating at a glacial pace. It’s not a lap pool so there’s no pressure to be fit, you can just sit there.

The pool has only been at our place for about 2 weeks but already it smells like a puddle that has been there too long. You can smell every foot that has ever been in it.

SCENT

puddle water, cigarettes, stubbed toe, hot plastic from Kmart.

By

S & H