For the uninitiated there are a couple of things you need to know about Central Florida. Firstly, it used to be all swamp. I don’t mean a bit damp, I mean 100% swamp. I am pretty certain that if it didn’t rain here for 15 years I would still squelch as I walked across the fairway playing golf.
The fact it used to be all swamp means that if your life depended on it and you were being attacked by one of the 13 foot long gators you have displaced by living here, you absolutely could not get a signal on your phone. Unless this attack happened to take place directly in or outside of a Starbucks and you could use their WIFI you couldn’t even text someone to help you.
Where I am from in the UK there is a “Secret Nuclear Bunker” you can visit, it is underground, made of 3 feet thick steel and was designed to keep out fallout from a nuclear bomb in London. I got a better signal from the bowels of this not so secret bunker than I do sitting in my house.
The second thing you need to know is that it rains, a lot. In the UK I used to think that if you looked out of your window on any given day of the year it could be any season. Low cloud, grey, not too hot, not too cold. You would get two weeks where it felt like you lived on the surface of the sun, two weeks where it might snow and you would love that for 20 minutes, then it would be brown slush for the next 13 days. In Florida it is fairly similar, if by similar I mean completely opposite.
When I get up and look out the window, every single day, without fail, it is glorious. April, sunny, June, sunny, December, sunny. That is at 7am. 7am in central Florida is why you move here. It’s warm, you can sit outside, it is perfect. Then by 12 midday you cannot breathe because it is so humid and hot. Any kind of manual work is not happening and I’ve turned in to this moist blob sitting in my chair moaning that the air con can’t be working.
After that you get the storm. From April to September, every single day at 3pm. From 3pm to about 5pm, it is like the end of the world. No matter where you live within about a 100 mile radius of my house your life is in danger if you put your head out of the window. When I first got here the storm would coincide with me leaving work. For the first year I honestly googled videos of cars getting struck by lightning to see if it could happen, looking for tips to survive. During these storms enough water comes down to flood my home town three times over. When I drove a mustang on slick tires, getting struck by lightning was the least of my worries really, keeping it on the road was like doing P90X.
The storm eventually ends, all my electrical appliances are in tact and not blown up by the power surge, and then we’re back to normal. 20 minutes after the rain stops you wouldn’t know it had happened. It goes from looking like Bangladesh when the Ganges floods every single bloody year, to just a normal street. It’s so weird.
Anyway, because it is so hot a lot of people here have swimming pools. We’re poor, so we don’t. What we have is an enormous 12 foot wide, 3 foot deep paddling pool. Something that once Corona is over the people who run our Homeowners Association will no doubt fine me for. (On a side note those people are ruthless)
I bought this right at the start of the lockdown for what I thought was a very reasonable $160. The good people at Amazon delivered it the day after I ordered it and 22 hours after I clicked it was set up in our back yard. A very cost effective solution to getting the kids out of the house, cooling off and having some fun while we can’t go anywhere. I was very pleased with myself.
I was wrong.
12 weeks we’ve had that pool, so far the $160 I spent has more than doubled. According to the boss we need chlorine tablets, new filters, a cover, pool toys, some thing to float around checking the “levels”. Not one person in this house, me included knows what the ph value of swimming pool water should be. I’m guessing 7, but that is a massive shot in the dark. What I do know is the second I walk out of my back door the smell of bleach is like Bourbon St at 6am.
There was talk of getting a heater! It’s 95 degrees ever day! I’m not heating that thing. I’m pretty certain that the piss I have first thing in the morning could fill that pool up, there’s not enough water to heat. As I type this Laura is changing the filter. I know this because the person I have seen most over the last 11 weeks was here this morning. Bob the Amazon delivery guy, dropping off another pool related purchase.
I also know this because at the weekend, someone who shall remain nameless opened up the mechanical filter to see if it needed changing and basically emptied the pool all over my patio.
All this is good though, if the kids are in it every day, getting away from their tablets and Xbox, blowing off some steam, getting some fresh air, enjoying how fortunate they are that their Dad works hard to get them a pool and that they live somewhere they can go swimming any day of the year. I’d love to jump in, but I am still not able to after surgery.
12 weeks ago I bought this thing…. Today was the 6th time anyone has been in it, I am 99% certain Harriet only goes in it when Laura tells her she needs a shower. She is very much like her Dad who only took 4 pairs of underwear to Ibiza when he was 17 because “I’ll wear them in the pool it will be fine”
The pool has gone the way of Fred’s golf clubs (birthday 2019), Harriet’s guitar (no particular reason just wanted it 3 weeks ago), my truck (March 2018) and Laura’s bread maker (I can’t even remember when). The novelty has completely worn off and it just sits there, the water perfectly warm, still and fantastically chlorinated.
The Shroders in Florida 