Closing time at the baths

At six in the morning the pool on Ashgrove Road is already busy. There are the lane swimmers, who nod and do not speak, and the old men in the slow lane, who speak and do not swim, and a woman of about seventy doing a stately breaststroke with her head held high like a swan who has somewhere to be.

On the last day of August the doors will close for good. The council says repairs to the roof would cost more than the building is worth, and nobody I spoke to believes the figure, and nobody I spoke to thinks it will change anything.

I spent a week at the baths for this piece, arriving at opening and leaving at close, and what struck me most was not the anger, though there was plenty, but the tenderness. People here look after each other. They notice if someone has not come in. They hold each other’s towels.

I wrote a novel about a place like this once, and I thought I had invented the kindness in it. I had not. I had only been paying attention.