Swimming Pools were a constant source of conversation in my youth. Or the lack of them to be more precise. I grew up in a town of 25,000 people with no body of water bigger than a family bath. Ireland was a poor place back then to be fair but as we lived beside the sea; the council probably thought it was an indulgence to build a pool when God had already provided swimming facilities.
That sea was just 120km from the Nuclear reprocessing plant at Windscale on the English coast however, which polluted the water but did nothing to raise its ambient temperature from the icy levels it maintained all year round. As a result, only mad dogs and gents in wet suits ventured into it. We grew up as a town of non swimmers where the sea was as alien as deep space and we only ventured into the water when we went on holidays. Then we would flap about like drowning men (which wasn’t far from the truth) before giving up and retiring to the nearest bar. Unlike swimming pools, there were 168 pubs in the town I grew up in. So that was an area we had lots of experience in.
On the two or three occasions in my younger years when we found it desirable to visit a swimming pool (which was around the time that we became interested in girls in swim suits) we would venture over the border to Northern Ireland which was well endowed with facilities provided by the British taxpayer to placate the locals. We would then bob around for an hour or so like pasta shells in a pot of boiling water. There were no lanes in that pool because the users were mainly Southern day trippers who were unable to swim in a straight line if they could swim at all.
I’ve been thinking about this recently as my one year old daughter has started swimming and we are spoiled for choice in Melbourne. Every school here seems to have a pool and the local councils compete to have the best facilities.
But it wasn’t only swimming pools that our town lacked when I was growing up. There were no playgrounds either. Kids had to make their own fun in half built housing estates and on railway tracks. It didn’t bother us to be honest. If you’re inventive, there are lots of things to slide down or swing from and they are more enjoyable when done outside of the sanitised confines of officially constructed facilities.
Yet again, Northern Ireland was different. My grandfather died when I was five and he spent the last couple of years of his life in a nursing home in Warranpoint, a sleepy town just across the border from us. We would be piled into the car each Sunday to go and visit grandpa and while my Mother spent an hour or so with her Father, my Dad would bring me and my siblings for a walk along Warrenpoint’s foreshore.
Just across from the hospital was a well appointed park with a brightly painted playground. To my disgust each Sunday I would find the gates to the playground locked. My Dad did his best to explain. At the time, most councils in Northern Ireland were run by Protestants who had gerrymandered the boundaries to ensure that they were in power even in strongly Catholic areas such as Warranpoint. And Protestants, he explained, wanted to respect God on Sundays by banning fun. As a result, playgrounds were shut, shops were closed and God forbid you’d try and get a drink anywhere.
This caused confusion in my five year old mind. To me, Sunday was the most appropriate day to do fun things like sliding and swinging and this inculcated my earliest understanding of the differences between Catholics and Protestants. When God said he rested on the seventh day, we took this to mean that he relaxed and what better way is there to do that than to go to a playground, watch a football match or have a beer with Friends. Protestants, or at least the fundamentalist type who lived in Northern Ireland, believed that rest involved pulling the curtains and huddling around a King James Bible.
My daughter doesn’t have to worry about any of this. There are ten playgrounds within walking distance of our house and none of them even has a gate that can be locked. She shows off her daring skills by climbing onto frames that petrify her Father and shows particular artistry in sliding backwards down slides with scant regard for what might be waiting at the bottom.
My hometown now has an Olympic sized pool, courtesy of the Celtic Tiger which also gifted almost every kid dwelling house with a backyard trampoline and assorted climbing and sliding paraphernalia. But outdoor pursuits require suitable weather and Melbourne provides more of that than Ireland.
So I can’t help thinking that my daughter is better off spending her formative years here where she can go to the park and meet kids of all colours and nationalities and play in a community environment. She might even bump into the occasional Northern Ireland Protestant and can introduce them to the concept of fun.
She loves other kids and finds them a welcome relief from her nervous and fidgety parents. Being a child is such a wonderful period time of your life. It should be spent in exploration and in the pursuit of joy. And every kid should have the opportunity to pursue these seven days a week and thankfully even in Warranpoint, you are now able to do that.
I’d like to think that on the seventh day God rested in a park, watching little children play and thinking to himself that for all its cynicism, this isn’t a bad old world that he created.
