Mikes Pool 1002

We took Mum to the plant fair at Mezieres-sur-Issoire, for buying tomato plants, cucumber, melon, lettuce, a variety of flowering in-fillers - asters, antirhinums and more. This year the weather was calm, warm and blue-skied, a big improvement on last year. Not so many plant stalls though, but more vide grenier. We skipped that, since the field location of the car-boot sale makes wheelchair pushing rather hard work.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, our own pool is open for business. It's got up to 27 degrees, very nice. We inflated my birthday present floating chair which is surprisingly comfortable and almost stable on the water.. Extremely good on the terrace too.

My brother Mike has spent the last few months building a swimming pool in his back garden. He got a digger in for excavating the hole but after that he's built it almost single-handedly. Breeze-block walls rendered and lined with felt, poured concrete floor, a large slabbed terrace... he's worked so hard to make this pool. He called us in to help fit the made-to-measure liner, as it needs someone to hold up the heavy vinyl while another feeds the edge into the groove. The corners were tricky, but before long it was all fixed.

The vacuum cleaner was inserted between liner and felt-lined wall to suck out the air as the hosepipes started to fill it with water. Wrinkles gradually smoothed out with the weight of water. Mike was hoping to fill it from his well (free water) but that soon ran out and needed time to refill, so mains water went in as well. It was painfully slow.. it's a huge volume in a 10 by 5 metre pool, 1.4m deep! It took days, but it's going to be fab, with underwater lights and solar heating. What an achievement.