Chlorine

The walls have ears, but the flume takes them by force.

Make sure you tuck in your arms and legs on the way down. There are rivets in the tube. If it's not tucked in, it's up for grabs. The rivets don't discriminate. Building the flume took all of the council's money; there wasn't enough left for sandpaper.

But if a normal swimming pool experience isn't exciting enough for you, those are the risks you have to take. The fun of plummeting down a water slide comes at a cost, and the cost is often the loss of a body part.

The flume is long and curls around. It starts inside, snakes outside, then forces its way back through the brickwork. You'll land in the pool with a satisfying sploosh. Take the time to appreciate it, before you check your appendages. You might as well have those few seconds of euphoria before you realise your hearing is now mono.

One in ten children will lose an ear on the way down. Though, to be fair, that's only one in twenty ears.

You can see them as you slide. Nobody will collect them. How would they? The ears stay where they were caught: attached to the screws and the nuts and the jagged plastic, hanging like fleshy bats That's part of the thrill of the flume. Not just the water and the danger. Not just the gravity. You get to see the ears.

All shapes and sizes and colours, dangling there like Christmas decorations. Some have earrings. Some have tape on the lobes, with the promise of earrings beneath. But you only get a sense of them. You're moving too fast. It's just an after-image of ears, flashing before your eyes alongside your life.

There were complaints. The ear loss was raised at the council meetings. "But what can we do?" they asked. "The flume has been installed. We can't take it down. It's still so popular!"

And it is popular. Despite of, or because of, the ears.

My cousin lost three ears in the same month. He must not have been frisked before entering the pool area.

It isn't just ears, of course. Some people lose fingers. Some, wigs. The mayor foolishly decided to go down with his ceremonial chain, and ended up drowned because of the weight.

Because of the wigs and ears, the flume is getting narrower every day. Soon there won't be enough room to get to the bottom. People will get lodged there; stuck like the very ears they came to see. We're all ears now, they might say.

The flume will probably be closed at that point. Someone on the swimming pool committee will suggest filling the flume with powerful acid to melt away the blockage. And the suggestion will be approved by three votes to one. The one vote will be from Lydia, who would never approve of acid because of what happened to her little boy, even though it was his fault for tripping over his goggles.

The acid won't eat through the flume, because it's made of a special plastic, suggested by someone who watched Breaking Bad.

The flume will reopen. And the ear harvest will continue. There we'll be. A town full of people with crooked glasses.

Still, it's safer than the diving boards, which are covered with swords.