Arundel Swimming Pool

Arundel Swimming Pool

is good fun
for everyone –

teetery toddlers
bald dawdlers
and ancient waddlers
keen lean chaps
in goggles and skull-caps
counting the laps –

it’s great
for two-yard dashers
unnecessary splashers
crawlers, sprawlers
screamers, dreamers
bare-back riders
sun-lotioned idlers
backwards-down-the-sliders
drop-outs on loungers
tiny ice-cream scroungers –

it’s so smashing for everyone
with all the slosh
and swirl and splash
and shouting friendly din
and the view of the castle
and blue sky now and again
and clouds and swallows and martins
skimming in –

they’re going to close it
and turn it into an Important
perhaps Significant
possibly Exclusive and Prestigious
or even Significantly and Prestigiously Exclusive

DEVELOPMENT,

and instead of an old swimming pool
which is only good fun for everyone
they’ll have something to make a lot of money
for someone.

Copyright: from Everest and Chips (Oxford University Press, 2002), © Robert Hull 2002, used by permission of the author

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