A funny thing happened on the way to the diving board.

We have been having unseasonably wet weather in Barbados for all of the month of January; it is supposed to be the dry season. So, as the month comes to its end we have another long night of heavy rain, which followed a day of intermittent rain, and was followed so far by more intermittent rain. I don't know why, but I do care if it represents something that many believe is man's handiwork coming to bear fruit.

I know the plants love the rain much of the time and I am not a farmer so it really does not bother me when it rains. But the rain seems to have had a very odd drying effect. No sooner had we had an incredible downpour than I went to look out to see if we had any flooding. No. All seemed to have been absorbed. Hold on a minute, I said to myself. Where is the water from the swimming pool?

We have had a spate of strange disappearances in the island, the most intriguing of which was the disappearance of some houses built by the Urban Development Corporation (UDC). I still have not heard how on a 166 square mile island you lose properties. This place has few forests and no jungle. When you come in by plane during the daytime you can see almost every property on the island. Now, maybe UDC's houses were in caves and therefore not visible to the naked eye. Anyway, they have now been found, but we were warned that they may disappear again. Wuhloss! But UDC did not build the swimming pool at the house where I live.

I called my landlord, and tried to explain what I was looking at, and I went into a small hysterical cackle because it was dawning on me what I was really seeing. A swimming pool hold a ton of water, or more precisely in our case 15,000 gallons. With no heat wave it was not evaporation. Also, this was not Jamaica where people steal all sorts of things, like large amounts of sand from the beach. We do have praedial larceny, but who would mistake my pool for a black belly sheep and run off with its contents?

We needed help, because even with the dry season 's heavy rains there was no way that they could refill the pool in a hurry. The man who had come to clean the pool in the morning, who was my prime suspect, could not be found. Suspicious enough, though I have to admit that I could not figure out where in his van he could carry all that water and why he would take it. If someone else wanted a pool filling, I guess that there is some black market for pool water. It beat me. But, we found his brother and he came to look at our drained over sized sink. All was simple enough. His brother had done a thorough cleaning, and had disconnected some pipes but forget to reconnect them when he turned the pump back on. So there went about 14,000 gallons of water. A bit of carelessness, eh.

Now, we have to fill it up again. Anyone want to grab some buckets? No, we had to turn on the hose and I must admit that I am shocked that it takes a whole day and more to put all that water back into a pool. It is now refilled, and I will keep a keen on our pool man's activities from now on. If his trousers seem very damp you can bet I will check his pockets to see if he is taking a few gallons off the property stealthily.