The One With The Water Palace

So, it might be time to move house again...

Let me set the scene.

Mara and I went swimming at Hamilton Water Palace yesterday morning. We set off early seeing as she'd been up since the crack of dawn - no change from the norm.

We park up, pay our fee and head down to the changing area. So far so good.

Seeing as this was our first visit, we spent a few minutes getting our bearings and seeing which areas were cordoned off for swimming lessons etc

This left us with 3 areas we could use:

1. The infant pool with the pirate ship centrepiece,
2. The river rapids pool area,
3. The flumes.

Mara was practically giddy when she saw the flumes for the first time, but had a mini meltdown when I told her we couldn't go on them this time as she was too little. She grabbed me by the hand and hauled me across to the other side of the pool while frantically pointing at the water slide. Not the smaller of the two either. The one where you had to climb about 50 stairs to reach the entrance at the top. The one that winds its way outside the building before shooting you out into a designated splash zone. The one that would have caused Caroline to murder me if I took Mara on it. Thankfully I had my sensible dad hat on yesterday and we steered clear. Next weekend though sweetheart...!

We had a quick rinse at the showers before heading to the infant pool. The water basically came up to my ankles so I was bloody freezing after my shower but Mara was fine. There were lots of other mums & dads sitting around the poolside or in the puddle that made up the pool itself. She weaved her way in and out of the other kids in the pool and the daredevil that she is, she found the infant slide that was about 3 feet long at the far end.

This is where things started to go wrong.

She climbed the two stairs to the top and stood victorious taking in her surroundings and looking to see who was watching her other than me. She smiled at me. One of the pool side dads caught her eye and Mara winked at him. A full on head turned to the side, mouth open wink. The poor guy didn't know where to look. She sat down and slid in to the pool with a "wheeee.' Climbed out, made her way round to the steps up the slide and stood atop it again like she'd just conquered Everest, hands on hips and everything. And then she did it again. Winked. Not just at one dad though, to all of them and all of the male lifeguards in the vicinity. Cue some laughter, some mortified looks and a couple of the dads saying to me "Oh, she's very friendly/forward/confident." I didn't know where to look.

After splashdown we quickly made our way over to the river rapids. I thought, we'll just bob about here for a bit and do some floating and swimming. I check the time as we get in, noting that she was about half an hour away from needing something to eat. So, we're in the rapids, getting carried around on the current, floating, floating, floating...straining... She's straining. Oh f**k she's going to shit in the pool. I had visions of that scene from The Inbetweeners 2 playing in my head, except instead of the flume it would be getting whipped round the rapids like some sort of brown torpedo in a spin cycle.

All I could think was "Please, please don't shit in the pool babe." It was ok though, it was just wind.

Deciding it was time to leave and not chance our luck just in case there was a more horrific sequel we made our way back to the changing room

I got Mara dried off and dressed first so she wouldn't get too cold before I sorted myself out. 

So there's me half wet, with my boxers on and in the midst of putting my t-shirt on when I hear a scream from the cubicle next door and an audible "Oh My Goodness!" I thought, poor woman is in there with her kids in the same situation as me and one of them has opened the door to the world. My head popped out the top of my t-shirt and there, looking up at me from the ground is Mara's little arse, with her head fully underneath the stall wall saying hiya to the lady next door. Mortified doesn't even come close to describing it. I knocked on the wall and said "I am so, so sorry." The lady replied nervously "Erm, its ok..."

Bugger getting dried. I pulled the rest of my clothes on and shoved everything else in my gym bag. Feet straight in to my Converse, sans socks, and practically ran out of the changing room, and the Water Palace, with Mara hog rolled under my arm.

We can't ever go back there.