Divination

 

In the past, the diviners  looked for signs and portents in the bones cast upon the floor. And those that were wise enough would then advise as to whether an enterprise should be undertaken, and whether there would be a favourable or unfavourable outcome.

So anyway, I opened the door and discovered a bone lying beneath my doorstep.

It is a leg bone from some poor unfortunate animal that once grazed a field. It has been gnawed and chewed.

I am not skilled in reading bones. Had I been able understand its import then I would not have bothered going swimming, instead I would have immediately turned around and gone  to watch the antics of the tadpoles instead.

However, sadly, ossomancy lessons did not form  part of the curriculum in my Yorkshire primary school, even though my teachers were relics from the dark ages, so I failed to take heed of this well placed warning sign and stepped over it.

There were other messages too that I fail to read…

 

The sky is the underside of a blue bowl pressing over me as I cross an expanse of grass. There are clouds as if the gods themselves are trying their best to warn me to turn right around and go back. But like all gods their spelling is lousy and they tend to blot the blue pages of their copy books with fat white blobs with fractal swirling edges.

You’d think by now that the gods would be able to write a clear message in the sky.

“Don’t go swimming!”

How hard is that?

A couple of cumulus clouds here and a few wisps of cirrus clouds there and… da da! The message could be received and understood.

I think we have  thick, slovenly gods.

Though I’m sure they were writing to warn me, but as I can’t read god blobs and blotches their scrawl was meaningless.

I discovered long after the event that in Leviticus 19-26 there is in fact a warning not to observe clouds. Leviticus needn’t have worried, for my aeromancy skills were zilch and hence I continued on my way.

Then I am there.

I am in the over-fifties swim.

The lanes have been sectioned off into three sections: slow, medium and fast. Signs indicate the direction we have to take. These signs also warns us against congregating at the ends; and that there is a space in the middle for those that wish to overtake slower swimmers.

A regular group of people go.

I have only been a few times, and not at all this last month. I have yet to make any friends there. They are an insular lot. There is a woman who looks like an ex-headmistress who has given me a ‘hello’ and a ‘goodbye’. A woman from whose serious demeanour I’d already previously determined I would try to avid getting the wrong side of. This woman is there when I arrive and she’s already going up and down the slow lane with her shark like motion.

I go into the slow lane.

The water is cold, and it is a shock.

I begin.

Cold Ex-Headmistress gives me a perfunctory ‘Hello’ as she swims by, and I laugh and tell her how out of practice I am, but there is no warmth in her response.

She is a faster swimmer than I, and will overtake me soon.

I have completed four lengths, when a friend of mine unexpectedly arrives. I am delighted to see her. My friend is registered blind and yet she is gamely carrying on and not letting this affect her at all. I call to her and she too gets into the slow lane. It is great to see her and we begin to swim up and down the pool side by side. Her daughter has just come back from a round the world trip and she is eager to share her news.

It is lovely to be swimming side by side and chatting about New Zealand, Australia and Thailand and we are laughing and I am thoroughly enjoying her companionship.

But there is  a rattle of old bones and a gathering of clouds.

There are chuntered comments here and there, something about lanes and overtaking.

I am sensitive to the needs of the faster swimmers to overtake and so I’m doing an odd doggy paddle, cum crawl, cum breast stroke so that I’m as close to the edge as possible and my friend is also close to the edge so that there is ample room for such sharks to glide by.

But something is building up. I catch an occasional comment from another swimmer, a woman with a cherry aspect.

This woman when I first saw her, on another occasion, had commented to Cold Ex-Headmistress about how quiet it was in the Friday swimming session, and had sung a little.

I’d quite liked that. I thought she might be someone to break us out of our ‘One Flew Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest’ silence. I thought she might be a bit of a rebel. Someone who would liven things up. It seems I was both wrong and right.

The slow lane isn’t at all busy. There are perhaps less than ten of us are there. As they complete their twenty lengths many soon leave and there’s even more space.

However, Cheery Aspect though is not the anarchist I’d hoped she was going to be. This time she is not singing but complaining. She finally complains sharply that me and my friend should not be swimming side by side as we are blocking the over-taking lane.

I am shocked. I have seen her on other occasions swimming parallel to her friends and chatting as she did so. I am astonished by this intolerance and saddened by her being such a stickler for the rules.

She has enlisted the support of Cold Ex-Headmistress with whom she has an formed an alliance. And just for good measure an elderly gentleman with pale white skin and flabby flesh that seems to be already falling away from his bones kicks me hard on my thigh to show his support.

Luckily,my friend is made of stern stuff and laughs at all this, but I’m upset.

I know the rules as well as them, but I also know that I would never have complained should ever they were swim side by side with one of their friends. I would instead have been pleased to see such companionship and to have heard their merry chatter.

I also know that if ever I found my way similarly blocked that I would have simply cut across to the other side and found open water and simply gone back the way I’d come.

However, the slow lane is now dominated by these two: Cold Ex-Headmistress and Cheery Aspect. It seems they have appointed themselves the prefects of the slow lane.  I don’t want to give in to their bullying and so my friend and I continue side by side a little longer.

Then I catch up with Cheery Aspect and explain that my friend is blind.

“I wouldn’t have complained if I’d known,” Cheery Aspect says.

I hope that she will now think about what it is like to be blind and cut off from the world, and what pleasure my friend was hopefully gleaning from our conversation.

I then wait for Cold Ex-Headmistress and give her the same information. “Oh, I know she is,” she says. “But this lane is for people swimming in single file and you shouldn’t be in the overtaking lane.”

I know she’s right about the rules, but I tell her that I would never have complained about her.

I then wonder about such rules and why some people like to hit others over their heads with them.

I wonder why they can’t find other creative ways of solving such problems which doesn’t involve curtailing the happiness of others. Or why they don’t stop to think instead, ‘Way ahead blocked, I’m obviously much faster than these slow coaches perhaps I’m in the wrong lane. Or way ahead blocked, I’ll just tread water for a while because those two people look as though they are happy and enjoying each other’s company and I wouldn’t want to spoil it in any way.

The next thing I notice is  Cold Ex-Headmistress and Cheery Aspect are now complaining to the lifeguard about us.

I’m now swimming behind my friend and trying to catch up with her and I tell her what I’ve seen.

My friend laughs.

The lifeguard has called his boss.

I now feel frightened and upset. Any minute now I expect to be hooked out of the water and thrown out of the swimming pool.

The lifeguard and the boss talk awhile longer.

Then Cheery Aspect and Cold Ex-Headmistress tell us that because my friend is blind she should have a lane all to herself.

I am sickened by this.

I am sickened that between them they have dreamt up such a solution. I am sickened to discover that they have discussed this with the lifeguards. I am sickened that they are now telling us what they have been discussing. I am sickened that they are reminding my friend about her disability when she came here to get away from all that.

I am swimming now behind my friend in the ordained single file, but I have fallen back as I tiring and feeling so upset.

Cold Ex-Headmistress then comes across yet again to tell us that my friend should have a lane all to herself and how that was how it was done once.

My friend laughs.

I try to imagine the other  poor blind person who once found themselves banished to their own lane. I’m astonished that this segregation was ever deemed necessary. I tell Cold Ex-Headmistress that this is an appalling idea and that it has upset me so much I don’t ever want to talk to her.

Soon there is hardly anyone left in our lane. It’s nearly the end of the session. My friend and I stop to chat at the side of the pool. I apologise to my friend for not being able to handle it and for not being able to think of the right thing to say.

Then the lifeguard comes along. He is kind and sympathetic. He tells us that the ‘rules’ are not ‘rules’ but guidelines. He tells us that we were not doing anything wrong. He tells us that there was plenty of space for the others to overtake when we were swimming side by side, and that some people are like that and not to let them worry us.

My friend then suggests to him that perhaps the faster swimmers were in the wrong lane and should have been in one of the other lanes.

He thinks about this for a while. The idea hadn’t occurred to him.

So we leave and shower. I see my friend across the road and then I walk home.

I think about how some people use rules as iron rods to beat the heads of others.

There is a heavy thick cloud across the sky as if a god in a, ‘I did try to warn you!’ flounce has just spilt white ink all across the sky.

I wonder if the bone will still be waiting outside my door, or if a hungry dog would have found it, or maybe even a passing T. Rex.

I discover the bone is still there.

A warning perhaps of what I will find inside.

I open the door….

and find…

bills!

 

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