Behind closed doors, a room too small, it all happens, the villagers disrobing. 

Inevitably, the T shirt falls, the damp floor soaks instantly.

 

The bundling of clothes, socks stuffed in shoes, cradled against the chest, the door pulled gingerly open

That's it, you're out, the claustrophobia subsides.

 

Foot printed floor, a central drain is stepped over to rows of pastel laminate doors, numbered, like sixties garages 

There's a pink one, and a blue one and a green one and yellow one......

 

Choosing this door, for reasons unknown, elbowed open against too strong squeaky hinges, the armloads of possessions shoved inside

 

Locking the door, requires the 20p coin buried in the trouser pocket at the bottom of the clothing mountain, hand furtling to find, the wrong pocket 

 

Extracted, the coin, slotted, the mechanism relents and releases the key on blue plastic 'what do I do with that' irritating strap

 

This would be the time you remember your goggles and nose clip are locked behind the not quite turquoise melamine door 

 

The 20p is non refundable as you insert the key, lever the door and retrieve the goggles. You're not shelving out another 20p so you let the door slam, trust to villager's luck and head for the communal village shower

 

The 'please shower before entering the pool' notice is systematically ignored by half of the villagers. Like multinationals and Tories they assume that rules don't apply to them. Or a little bit of defiance in the face of the faceless joyless village

 

This is the first time you have seen other villagers, hermetically sealed as they have been, disembodied grunts in their impersonal cubicled, sterile changing facility

 

After the swim it's all done in reverse, is back to the whole steel and melamine industrialness of it, the community heart ripped out , the social fabric soul destroyed. 

Irrelevant in this triangulated unitised world 

 Numpty's. They're all made out of ticky tacky .....

 

GMJ 2014