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| Our pool filling Houses of ‘Los Sauces’ beyond Part of the repaired handrail to the right |
Well, the apparent calm and banality of the scene hides something far more stressful, but also far more instructive, than you might imagine. At least for me.
The pool belongs to what out here in Spain we call a ‘community’. This one, in the fine neighbourhood of La Cañada, includes our house and is called ‘Los Sauces’, which means ‘The Willows’. An excellent name, except for the fact that there isn’t a willow to be seen for miles around.
It’s a bit like that great British dessert, plum pudding. Famous for containing practically every kind of fruit known to mankind, except for plums.
There are sixteen houses in the community. That’s an ideal number for the size of pool. It means that much of the time, we can use it undisturbed by anyone else. Or, if there’s someone else there, it tends to be one or two neighbours, and we like them all. That makes it as good as a private pool though it’s larger than most.
Sadly, though, the community fell into a trap a few years ago. It was the result of a tragic accident. An accident that left one of our neighbours in a wheelchair. Spending time in the pool is good therapy for him, and the community rallied around to put in some new steps that he could manage.
What, you may be wondering, was the trap?
It was a classic. They went for a cheap option. And, like so much cheap work, it ended up costing a lot more in the longer run.
The steps were badly built. The handrails, in particular, were soon loose and needed strengthening. The builders also did a lot of damage to the tiles at the bottom of the pool, causing more and more of them to lift.
That’s not just an aesthetic problem. Chlorinated water in contact with the concrete lining of the pool can cause it to rot, until the whole structure is damaged and suddenly you’re looking at having to replace the pool altogether.
This all meant that last year we had to decide to do some major work repairing the pool, costing considerably more than the new steps had. Such is karma.
What, you may now be wondering, has any of this to do with me personally?
Well, our little community has a paid, professional administrator, and an unpaid, unprofessional president. The president is chosen not by election, but nonetheless democratically. The honour and privilege of the presidency goes from house to house along the row of sixteen, with each houseowner in turn holding the post for a year.
As a rule, the President has practically nothing to do. He or she attends a meeting at the start, where the investiture takes place to the acclamation of the assembled multitude – I may be slightly enhancing the pomp of the event – and another at the end to hand the privilege on.
But that isn’t quite the same when the Community has a major investment to make. Then there is work for the President to do. Especially since the administrator is a strictly part-time position and isn’t paid anything like enough to make it much less part-time.
Now can you see where this is going?
Yep. It was my turn to be president in what I’m sure I shall forever think of as the Year of the Swimming Pool Crisis.
My first aim was to try to build consensus in favour of whatever solution we adopted. I used to prefer that way of doing things at work too. It isn’t always possible and sometimes you have to lay down the law. Or, and the difference is only one of tone, throw your toys out of the pram. Which was the case with this project.
In the first place, we came up with two possible firms to do the work. Both sent a representative to a meeting of the Community. Unfortunately, the slightly more expensive one sent an expert, who explained in rather a dry and unadorned way just what had to be done and the possible problems. The other sent its CEO, who was a pure salesman. Full of charm, and jokes, and a Boris-Johnson way of sounding like he could easily be the best friend of everyone present.
It was a highly effective object lesson in the power of salesmanship. The majority, including me, fell for it.
Naturally, we gave his company the job.
To be fair, he hit some problems that were beyond his control. We’ve just had the wettest March and April since local records began. While it was chucking it down, his guys couldn’t do much.
On the other hand, there was some serious soldering to be done on the defective handrails of the staircase. That had to be done indoors. There’s no good reason why it couldn’t have been completed while the rain was lashing down. But it wasn’t.
At one point, a small number of neighbours started to complain rather more vehemently than I felt appropriate. Toys, I decided, had to be thrown out of the pram. In the calmest possible way. I told the Community’s WhatsApp group that I understood that someone else, a native Spanish speaker, rather than a foreigner with only limited mastery of the language, could do a much better job of putting a slow contractor under pressure.
I was more than happy for one of them to take over.
That shut the complainers up. No doubt, the fact that I was completely sincere helped. You may not be surprised to learn that there were no volunteers.
The complaints started again when the weather turned good, and swimming became desirable, but progress on the pools still seemed stalled.
Gradually, my phone calls with the company went from being roughly weekly, to two or three times a week, to daily and then several times a day. I kept being told that things were on the brink of completion. And then they didn’t complete.
We ended up with a constantly repeating cycle, of Promise-Hope-Disappointment.
Eventually, though, the job got done. Perhaps not 100%. Maybe 90%. But that included the tiling and the handrails. I probably need to be satisfied with that. Or at least resigned to it.
And now comes the important moment: it’s time for me to step down as President.
It turns out I’m nothing like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. I feel absolutely no inclination to cling on to the top job at all costs. Besides, I never used my position to invade a neighbouring community, or to attempt to undermine the constitution of mine, or even to break its rules, not something they can say. Or at least not without lying.
I admit their offices may be slightly more prestigious and powerful than President of the Community of The Willows, in La Cañada, Valencia, Spain. But still, you know what I mean. I can’t wait to dump the responsibility of the job on my unfortunate successor and next-door neighbour.
We love her dearly, but it’s her baby now.
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