Poolside antics

Two pool related things happened this weekend.

The first is that we ran into one of our local candidates. Or more accurately, he almost ran us over as he backed out of his car spot at the pool. I could tell it was our local candidate as it was plastered with "Vote 1 Peter Shmigel" signs two feet high, had flags flying from both sides and was generally otherwise smothered in stickers.

I've swapped a few emails with Shmigel as he has written the Liberal party policy on cycling. He also managed to get some local media coverage by stating that he was doing most of his electoral business by bicycle, which isn't that hard in an electorate like Balmain. (He drove to the pool though, in a Subaru 4WD of all things - ha ha, just like me). It's not a bad idea. The expectation is that Labor will lose Balmain, but that it will fall to the Greens. It makes sense for Shmigel to try and outflank the moonbats by actually acting reasonably green, rather than just posing and making a lot of noise (and making stupid paper mache puppets).

He is the first candidate that I have actually laid eyes on during this election campaign. We've had no doorknockers and not much mail encouraging us to vote this way or that. It's a bit like a phony campaign.

Anyway, the second interesting thing was an "incident" at the pool. We were in the kiddy pool, which is about 1.2m deep at the deep end - just deep enough for say a six year old to drown in. I was standing in the water doing monkey business when the life guard just strode to the edge of the pool, leapt in (shoes and all) and waded across to a young girl and dragged her out. She had obviously been struggling, but no one had noticed. I don't think she got more than a mouthful of water and a bit of a shock at being grabbed by the lifeguard.

The reaction afterwards was interesting. Mum came to the edge of the pool to collect kid. Mum couldn't do much, as she had a baby (proabably 2 or 3 months old if that) wrapped up in a poncho across her chest. It's not like mum was able to jump in and grab the older kid. For some reason that I didn't follow, Mum seemed to get quite cross at the lifeguard, telling him that there was not much she could do with a kid attached to her chest. (I think lifeguard had told her to keep a better watch on her kid).

Then dad turned up. He had another kid in tow - it looked like a twin sister. He collected both kids and went to walk off, when a woman in the pool had a go at him verbally. Well, that was that. He was fully dressed, but he strode down into the water not far from me and had it out with the woman, telling her to mind her own business and not to tell him how to look after his children etc etc. She called him a bad parent and all that kind of thing. I thought that if it went on any longer, punches would be thrown. He was quite furious, and she was in a totally self-riteous mood.

The lifeguard had to jump into the water again to pull them apart. I noticed then that he looked the part - he had about 20 tatoos all over him. He could have bounced at any manly hotel in his spare time. Interesting that the council needs to employ people whose primary skill is breaking up fights, and their secondary skill is CPR.

After a while, the bloke took his kids and wandered off. I assumed that the lifeguards had a word with him and booted him out.

Frankly, I had the shits with that woman. She didn't do anything to help the kid, who had been no more than two feet away from her when she was in trouble. All she had to do was reach out one arm and pull the kid up, but she just stood there and watched. Then afterwards, she has the temerity to butt into someone else's problem. I doubt that the parents felt particularly good after causing a scene where a lifeguard had to grab one of their kids out of the pool. If it was me, I'd feel pretty embarrased and ashamed. To then have this useless bystander turn around and tell you that you are a bad parent.... he should have put her in a headlock and held her under for a minute. One less blathering Balmain basketweaver would have been a blessing.