Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country by Tony Hawks

together they were providing heavy rain as I clambered over the pool’s sagging sides. I soon found myself standing in a few feet of water. The pool had emptied much quicker than it had filled. The water now barely came up to my knees. Given that each second saw more water lost, my initial hope of attempting the stroke of front crawl was now out of the question, given that there was nowhere near enough water for the downward strokes of the arms. I still held out some hope that the breaststroke could work, though. I quickly got down into the swimming position.
    Ah.
    Not good.
    I was like a beached whale. I had run aground. Pride, more than anything, made me attempt to swim the breaststroke, but too much of my body weight was pressing against the bottom of the pool for any forward momentum to be achieved. From the kitchen, Fran and her family looked on, as a man attached by a rope to a tree tried his best to do the breaststroke, lying in a few feet of water. Judging by the noises I could hear, this was a source of some amusement for them.
    At dinner that night, Nan quietly asked me what I’d been doing previously in the pool. Laughter erupted, causing food to shoot out of several mouths. It was almost as if my earlier behaviour had been silly.
    It’s not easy being a genuine innovator.
    ***
    ‘How’d it go?’ asked Ken, the following morning, as I chatted to him whilst he tinkered with his tractor.
    ‘Not that well,’ I replied, with a measure of understatement. ‘The pool definitely needs to be on the flat.’
    ‘Does it?’
    ‘Yes, it very quickly emptied itself completely.’
    ‘Haven’t you got a flatter bit of ground at the bottom of the garden?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, shall we have a go at trying it there then?’
    I was impressed. Ken seemed even keener than I was to see the experiment with the Hawks Harness carried out successfully, quite possibly because he hadn’t suffered the previous day’s humiliation.
    ‘I’ll pop over in the afternoon and give you a hand.’
    My neighbour, like me, had the pioneering spirit.
    Fran’s ten-year-old brother Oli helped with the preparation of the land. I believed him still to be a Harness sceptic, but levelling ground was obviously more fun than preparing food, and this was the only other activity that was on offer to him. This odd mix of workers soon had a circle of land close to our rear fence ready for the second attempt with the pool. After a couple of hours’ hard labour, we sat back and watched as the pool filled with water again. Ken reiterated his confidence that the harness would work, but made a suggestion for an improvement.
    ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘If you add a chest expander – you know, like body builders use – between the rope and the harness, that will provide a bit of give and stop you being pulled backwards too sharply, after you take a strong stroke that pulls you forward.’
    ‘I’ve got one in a box I haven’t unpacked yet,’ I replied.
    ‘Shall we try it?’
    ‘What have we got to lose?’ I asked.
    A beat.
    ‘A chest expander,’ said Ken.
    ‘And my pride,’ I added.
    Ken then popped back home for tea, on the understanding that I would fetch him for the successful unveiling of the Hawks Harness once the pool was fully filled.
    That fine summer evening saw six adults (Ken had brought his wife Lin) and two children gathered by a low-grade, bottom-of-the-range, above-ground, inflatable swimming pool. Two of the onlookers were excited. The rest were ready for a good old belly laugh. With Ken’s assistance, I tied the weightlifting belt around my waist, and reached down for the chest expander and began to attach it. Big laughs. Mocking noises of derision. Stolid, resilient, unflappable Ken – a picture of concentration like a top golfer’s caddy – fetched the rope from the tall post that he’d attached earlier to the back fence. He had done this so that the rope could be angled down from a sufficient height for my