"The Same Deep Water as I"

Kingston Riverside today.



"Just how deep does a swimming pool need to be? How deep and how large?"

The one presented before me was enormous! I had know idea why I was here and I had know idea how I got here! But I was here, and here to stay!

I found myself by the pools edge at one end. The pool stretched out before me for what must have been a thousand feet in length, five hundred feet wide and one hundred feet deep! The whole thing was covered by a huge hanger and any sound that I heard was greatly magnified due to the size of the vast empty space that I found myself in. To the left hand side of the pool and near to the end that I was at, I could see through the light ripples, submerged on the pools bottom a Boeing 747 aircraft. It looked positively tiny as it lie dead, crushed under a billion tonnes of water! It was intact and looked just as if it were waiting on the runway of an airport. I thought maybe that it was there for deep sea rescuers to practice rescuing people from aircraft that crash into the sea. It looked very odd nonetheless.
On closer inspection of the pools bottom, I could make out tiny little figures walking around in diving suits. They looked busy and moved with purpose. The more that I looked, the more people I saw. Their suits were of the canvas type with large metal helmets shaped like spheres with small circles of ultra thick glass with which to see through and to protect the wearer from the great pressures of such deep water.
As I looked down into the depths of the pool, I noticed that my feet were covered with these giant metal boots. The soles of which were made up from three or so inches of solid lead! I felt very heavy and realized that I too was dressed in the same way as the people I could see under the waters surface. The glass covered hole cut into the front of my helmet made sure that I could see forward. I looked to my left and saw another glass hole and to my right another. Through the small round window on my right side I saw a man standing right by me. He said that he was the owner of the pool. He looked me up and down and told me that I looked just like a proper diver. He smiled when he said this and then looked into the water and said for me to get in.

After telling him that I had never been diving before, I found myself climbing down onto the pools ledge and lowered my legs into the icy looking water and found myself thinking how long it would take for me to reach the bottom. There were no steps nor any kind of hoist to lower me in! Surprisingly, as I let myself go, I sank quite slowly as I approached the pools bottom. The sides of the pool were made up from thousands and thousands of square, once brilliant white tiles, now slightly yellowing with grouting that was stained a light brown. I let my thickly gloved fingertips run against the tiles surface to help keep my balance. The echoey sound that was quite distinctive at the surface was replaced by a deeper, much quieter almost eerie sound. It got slightly louder the closer I reached the bottom. The heavy metal and canvas of my diving suit was now weightless. The canvas clung to my legs and arms as the waters pressure put tremendous
weight on my body. I felt quite warm, after thinking the water might in fact be freezing, although my fingers did feel like they were swelling up and my ears began to hurt a little and began ringing. Even my teeth hurt as I could feel the air trapped beneath my fillings expand!
I finally reached the bottom and landed perfectly upright, my head stooped down as my heavy suit & I carried on downwards momentarily. I saw the grimy tiled floor and looked up and slowly shuffled around until I was facing the massive expanse of the pool before me. It was quite bright down here, but as I looked up, the surface had all but disappeared and had turned into a beautiful deep blue. Looking back down onto the pools tiled floor, I saw all around my feet various cables and chains coiled into small neat piles. Straight ahead of me I could see the Boeing 747. It looked much bigger than it had from the surface. I found myself walking towards it. As I made my way through various winding cables, heaps of thick dirty rope, chains made up from links the size of my feet and large mesh steel boxes full to the brim with various tools, the 747 got bigger and bigger. I passed several other people dressed in the same way as I. They completely ignored me as if I had been there for years.
As I approached the airplane, my ears had stopped ringing from the pressure of the water and now, in the distance, I could hear the sound of what must have been the pools filters working hard to keep the pools massive watery contents crystal clear. The sound that these machines made which powered the filters made me think of a room, also filled with water, situated behind the main walls of the pool with a number of naked men with large heavy lead boots on, all slowly heaving lengths of heavy chain behind them. Maybe they were ghosts and had been sent to their sealed water filled room as punishment for drowning in the pool.

As I approached the lonely looking giant of an airplane, I suddenly wondered where my air was coming from! I don't remember having any air tanks on my back and there were no air tubes feeding me air from the surface either! I almost began to panic, until I said to myself that I'd be already dead if I wasn't getting any air. I did my best to forget about it for the time being and headed for the plane.
Once I had finally reached the undercarriage, I saw a door leading out of the pool and went to it. The door automatically slid open as I approached it and through it I went. It led outside onto an old cobbled street and although I was still submerged under thousands of gallons of water, I was outside. The surrounding area looked old and dirty. I looked up to see if I could see the surface of the water but it seemed bottomless and faded into the same deep blue as it did from the pool inside. I daren't stray any further outside, in case I got lost. As I turned to walk back into the sliding doors, the man that owned the pool was standing there. I stopped dead and looked at him. He stepped closer to me and said that I walked just like a proper deep sea diver. He then leant in to me and kissed me on my cheek. I felt his prickly stubble press through my helmet and onto my soft skin. I pulled back slightly and told him how prickly he was as I walked away towards the sliding doors once more. The owner looked quite embarrassed as I left him standing there.

This time, just inside the door was another man seemingly keeping guard. He saw me come in and held up an arm as if to say wait. He looked into the pool, both left and right, then back at me. He said it was all clear and nodded for me to enter. I continued back into the pool walking slowly and heavily like a man on the moon might. Progress was slow but steady.
The man who owned the pool, the man who had kissed me, wanted me to work here at the pool, so he would see me everyday. He was back inside the pool with me and told me so. He pointed up to a platform near the middle of the great tiled floor of the pool and said that I had to climb up to it using the almost invisible, tiny steps winding their way up it. The platform was about half the depth of the pool. He told me that everyone else who wanted to work here had to go around the long way and that I was very privileged to be shown up this way. Once up on the narrow looking platform right in the middle of the water, there would be a means of joining the pools workforce by way of entering my personal details into a computer and then begin my time here permanently.




Jason








(C) JPT 2008.........