Contributions from supporters
Marjorie and Craig Blair, Project Manager with CBC Ltd on the roof during our site visit, December 2008. Solar panels are to be installed where they are standing.
Stuart's last swim
Not just a place - A way of life........
I went to Glenogle on Sunday the 19th and swam my usual quota. At 1pm it got quieter and quieter, and as the half hour passed I was the only swimmer in either two lanes for my last ten lengths. It felt strangely eerie. I swam alone up and down in the middle of the lane. It was as if it had meant to be like this. I felt the last 15 years of my life passing me by as I looked all around up and down thinking.....this is it...this is the end of the line as we know it. I tried to stop myself finding it unbelievable that I had thought about this day coming some 3 months ago, 8 weeks ago and 4 weeks ago. Suddenly the day comes and this is it.
I chatted with Michael Stuart, one of the more recent lifeguards this
year
who told me everyone had received a new place except him. I shook his hand
and wished him well.
I took one last shower. That funny room and heavens places like that are
time capsules now! On returning to my cubicle (the one I felt had
become mine - the first one at the door up to the sauna - it seemed very old fashioned
and I decided I'm an old fashioned kind of guy - I hate change and loathe
new
things. A creature of habit and yet we all get used to change, often quicker than
we imagine.
I dressed and walked from the cubicle to the door of the pool. The walk
took
longer than usual. I combed the little hair I have and suddenly wanted to
stop at the water fountain. I just stood for a couple of minutes alone (there
were very
few people anywhere by now) leaning on the hand rail - looking up, down and
around, smelling and hearing sounds...the faces, the laughter, the characters
.....who were they all...what were their names. Will I ever see any of these
people ever again?
I came out of what felt like a mini trance and leaned back from the hand rail. I turned to open the door and - no.....wait! One more look round ...I waved my hand at the open space and left.
I shook hands with the new girl on the till and said "Thank-you - all of you for looking after us". I climbed up the stairs to the SaxeCoburg entrance and quite suddenly I surprised myself - I felt sad, even slightly tearful. Silly isn't it? Only the end for a while. Still, my playground, our place would now be locked up and left lonely, in darkness from the end of this day. No Monday for Glenogle this week. No more Glenogle for a long time.
Feeling sad and a bit lonely tonight. Tomorrow's a new day. Hope to see my friends again sometime, somewhere.
Green MSP Robin Harper enquiring about our campaign, Treefest, June 2008
Which lane do you swim in? Cartoon by Evelyn Kerr who swims 3 times a week.
Poster by the Junior Lifesaving Club early 1990s
All 58 Councillors received a Christmas card from the campaign containing this verse entitled 'The Twelve Days of Glenogle'
On the twelfth day of Christmas my Councillors gave to me
Twelve swimmers swimming
Eleven divers diving
Ten life guards leaping
Nine weights a-lifting
Eight abs a-crunching
Seven school kids learning
Six babies splashing
Five old ladies having a chat
Four aerobics classes
Three steamy saunas
Two diving boards
And a nicely refurbished swimming pool
"Please save our pool or I'll never learn to swim!" May 2007
Collecting signatures on our petition before the local elections. May 2007
This is Angus Reid who swam 5 km at Glenogle to raise money for charity and
awareness for Save Glenogle Baths. He requested but never received sponsorship
from certain well known councillors.
Underwater photography by Tana and Mark Reid
Stockbridge Public Baths as it was known in 1906
Diana Hendry swims 20 lengths twice a week. Her poem describing the experience was published in the Scotsman and featured on Radio 4’s Poetry Please. (From Sparks! Mariscat Press 2005)
Up and down up and down up and down I go (one) called here as by a mullah calling me to Health at ungodly hour (two) of eight a.m. breaststroking up backstroking down possessed of idee fixe twenty lengths much as the Lord has three (three) score years and ten in His or so it’s said and is He in the swim no He is not He is above it all (four) upping and downing as repeat of breakfast dinner tea and much (five) as tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow (six) creeps on a petty pace though creeping is not what I (seven) do sometimes the crawl pretending to be fish arm over ear over arm over ear flip flap of fish-tail feet could be fins (eight) nice to have gills monotony they say (who?) can give (nine) way to revelation through my goggles I see by glimpses (ten) now goggled in Glenogle and ear-plugged too such sensory deprivation and O how I love them (eleven) the others distracting me from the tee-hee-hee-deum of the self self self (twelve) those swimming in lanes the narrow traps of straight and (thirteen) narrow moral horror the old men gossiping (fast one fourteen) in the shallows and she who gets on my wick always hogging (fifteen) the inside lane in never-get-hair wet cap (sixteen) even the the ladies known as the minesweepers for swimming three abreast chatty happy as they go and (seventeen) turning my up and downing into round (eighteen) abouting and Jimmy singing Come Fly With me who is maybe seeking another element though this (nineteen) if there were sky above and infinity before and behind and if it were only sea spread vast and deep is mine so sometimes you (twenty) have to make do and of course I enjoy it.