Someone – Not Naming Any Names – Keeps Shitting in Swimming Pools in Lanarkshire

It is with sadness that we must report the Hamilton Water Palace in Lanarkshire has had to close 23 times in four years due to floating shits deposited in its pool water, with the nearby Lanark Swimming Pool being closed ten times in the same period for the same reason. That's 33 bobbing turds, people.

An FOI request to South Lanarkshire Council by the Hamilton Advertiser also found that the Coalburn Swimming Pool had been closed six times in the same period due to shits, with Carluke Pool, Dollan Aqua Centre in East Kilbride, Blantyre Pool and Eastfield Pool in Rutherglen all being closed twice. There is, as the Scottish say, "no wee amount of shite" going on.

In case you're wondering how much effort goes in to tidying up a shit you have done in a pool, Gerry Campbell – South Lanarkshire's Leisure and Culture GM – reckons it takes about 36 hours. "When this happens we close the pool immediately and carry out a strict cleaning regime to ensure any harmful bacteria is removed," he told the Daily Record. "This is carried out in line with Pool Water Treatment Advisory Group guidelines. The timescale for this can vary based on volume of pool water, turnover and chemical treatment. For the 25-metre pool at Hamilton, this takes 36 hours."

Let us maths:

36 hours x [23 Hamilton Water Palace bobbers + 10 Lanark Swimming Pool turdies + 6 Coalburn Swimming shits + 2 Carluke, Dollan, Blantyre and Eastfield ploppies] = 1,980 hours of turd-ruined non-swimming in Lanarkshire alone.

When a series of pool floaters happen, we have to open our books and balance the facts and ask ourselves the simple three-part question: Is this the work of one person? Is it a gang initiation? Or is it a spate?

Definitions:

i. One human person, with one singular anus, is doing all these floaters;
ii. A strange Scottish street gang – who I'm going to go out on a limb here and say are called the Caledonian Jobby Collective – are getting kids to do shits in pools as part of their initiation, and when they have shat significantly enough to close a facility they are rewarded with a nice new knife;
iii. Something strange has settled on the Lanarkshire air and people are just straight up shitting in swimming pools bound by forces unseen and unknown;

It's weird because, to me, option iii. seems at once the most and least likely. There is almost certainly not a Scottish gang going around doing jobbies to prove to their McCappo that they are capable of stabbing Celtic fans for a laugh. It is truly unlikely that one human – no matter how organised, no matter how determined – could shut down three swimming pools over 40 times in four years. There simply has to be something in the Lanarkshire water that is making people do shitty. There is some compulsion, some glint of mischievousness on the fresh Lanarkshire air, that is making people go to the swimming pool, change carefully into their trunks or costumes, totter into the blood-warm water and shit. There is just something – intangible and impossible to either nurture or halt – that is making people in Lanarkshire shit themselves in swimming pools. There is nothing the council can do. This is just a thing that happens now. You cannot prevent Scottish swimmers from shitting.

Larkhall Swimming Pool has been shut zero times, which – depending on your glass half full/glass half empty outlook – means it's either the safest place in Lanarkshire to swim or the place most likely to be hit by a malicious jobby and closed due to contamination.

This is, actually, a good way to gauge a person's outlook on life. Do you live in constant fear of bobbing turds floating at you while you swim? Pessimist. Do you swim freely, knowing the pool has already been shat in as much as it can possibly take? Optimist. We are all one or the other: we are all either swimming against the hopeless tide, constantly aware of our own mortality and the threat of bobbing floaters, or we bound on regardless, furrowing our own jobby-free path. It feels like there is a moral in here that we are close to uncovering. It feels like maybe Lanarkshire people should learn where to shit.

@joelgolby

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