swimming pool

I have had the piscine municipal all to myself for three days. As the mistral windsurfed on the freezing water my arms reached back and up, fingertips almost touching the forks of low-scooping swifts and piercing the blue of the sky. A heavenly kilometre was swum. That was until the quartet arrived:

The beautiful nut-brown girl arrived first with the spotty boy. She - taut in her high cut bathing suit, not quite ripe for the picking, and he - fingers trembling, dodging her lanky flung limbs in fear of their erotic charge. Then came the floppy curled nut brown boy, dipping in and out of the ice blue at unexpected junctures on her squealing body, his hair raining sexual confidence all over her. The spotty boy circled in awe. Then the fat girl arrived and sat on the side and cried.

And then the bombers came, making as many violent waves as they could in the big wet square of safety with their innocent bodies.

Which one were you?

Yesterday my father didn't take the bus into town in London, where his meeting at the British Museum- in the centre of the bombings - had been cancelled. Meanwhile, a friend walked from Battersea to Maida Vale with a cello on her back trying to get to a rehearsal, unaware. It was good to hear both their voices.