A Water Park Beside the Tracks

The pool is a blue plastic paddling pool from the hardware shop, with three basins and one curved edge. That edge is the reason it is here: the shape already gives me a bay, so all I have to decide is what sits along it. On this afternoon it was a lighthouse, a white motor cruiser, a yellow slide and a snack cart. And a few paces further on, the garden railway was doing its rounds.

You build it in one go

A build outdoors does not tolerate being put off. Whatever is still standing in the evening will not be standing the same way next morning — the grass springs back, the soil settles, and the wind has moved something. So it all happens in one sitting: set the pool, fill the water, lay the sand plates for the shore, then rocks, palms and finally the figures. The photos you see here are less than ten minutes apart. The half afternoon before them was all carrying and shifting.

The water is the most honest part of the whole thing. It really stands in the basin, it really reflects the sky, and it moves the moment somebody kneels down at the edge. It just stays blue, because the tub is blue. A diorama with real depth would look better here — but then the basin would have to be black, and it would stop being a lido.

Wind and the height of the sun have a say

Plastic palms weigh almost nothing. When a gust comes through, the parasols go first, then the palms, then the figures along the pool edge. I spent more of that afternoon standing things back up than taking pictures.

The sun is the other matter. Around midday it comes down so steeply that the figures get black holes under their chins and the water turns into a mirror. Only towards half past two did it come in from the side, and suddenly the pirate ship’s sails had some texture, the slide threw a shadow onto the shore, and the surface went transparent instead of white. What I could not get rid of is the wire fence in the background. In a few frames I can tuck it behind a shrub; in others it simply stands there.

The railway ends up in the picture anyway

The track runs on a timber trestle through the lawn, past the half-timbered houses, and the aqua park sat right inside that loop. When the red locomotive comes past with its coaches, I can hardly ignore it — and I would rather not. A lido next to an embankment tells a story that neither half tells on its own.