No Women in the Mens!

Bourne Lido is not your usual lido. It really hasn't altered a lot since it was just a bend in the river that in the summer held back enough water to swim in. And not much changed since when someone poured some cement around it and nailed some corrugated iron on top of some cowsheds for everyone to change in.

It's not lane-marked-high-temperature Peterborough, where swimmers steam up and down in silence, but is just a place for kids to mess around and show off, just beside the cricket pitch and separated from the back gardens of the surrounding houses by just a hedge.

I could see someone making tea.

It's overlooked by the Bourne Abbey Church and sometimes you hear the bells of a wedding going on over there. Rooks circled and croaked over me. In the breeze, swayed a row of sycamores, and now and then today I heard the crack of bat against cricket ball outside on the pitch.

"It's 24C today," the boy said as I went in.

It seemed to be all run by boys and I found it hard to tell the difference between the ages of the Life Guards, and the larking gang of boys jumping around and making a great deal of fuss about playing with a ball. Some seemed remarkably overweight.

I headed off to the safer mid-depths and looked over to the  Snack bar which is the gem of the Lido.

Surrounded by the largest cornucopia of sugary items this side of Blackpool, none of which was over £1.50, it also did takeaway items, defiantly showing its support for the town's past as the fattest town in England. Pretty much the entire menu consisted of chips, burgers, sausages and pizzas, in  some combinations, with the option to have a side order of chips.

The changing rooms were unaltered too from the last time I was here 3 years ago.

There were two pages of rules all beginning with "No." Twenty three of them in all,  though I saw 'No Fighting' and 'No petting'  were repeated twice.

Interestingly they were translated into three other Cyrillic looking languages which I took to be Polish and Russian.

"Nr Akrobatiky"  I read.

The Lifeguard boy told me he thought the other one was Latvian or Ukrainian. He '"only spoke Polish and Russian' himself so was sorry he couldn't be more helpful."

Some girls then arrived and the boys re-doubled their efforts to impress. And I got out and left all parties shouting, or screaming, or whistling, and had a hot shower.

I saw two extra rules were still up in the shower area.

The first said oddly, " Do not abuse the showers!"

and there was a second, which I remember from many years ago. It showed the innocent times then, when to enforce such a rule was right and obvious, unlike today, when to insist upon it might be a imprisonable offence.

"If a female is found in the male changing room then they will be asked to leave!" it stated.