Last week it felt as if spring was being kept on the bench but this Sunday it was warming up on the touchline: sunshine football games,  joggers with a spring in their step and the pool temperature rising.

Mother’s Day
The water in the pool
Softer

A quickening light
In the air the first bumblebee
Waved away

A day of rest
Propping up the posts
The goalkeeper

On the edge
Frozen in warm sunshine
A watching squirrel

I was told this story at the Lido. A lifeguard liked eating smelly fish like smoked mackerel. When the summer season was over, the part-timers who were leaving, decided to play a trick on him. They bought fresh mackerel and hid them in the office and behind his locker. The winter season started and as time went by the fish began to stink but no-one knew where the smell was coming from. It was bad and the person who told me this story asked the lifeguard if he’d noticed and whether it bothered him. He replied that he couldn’t smell anything.