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Wednesday 2nd November 2005

I have been getting a bit of work done, though not quite enough, though the script feels much closer to being ready than this time last week. More importantly I feel pretty relaxed and have got my head back together. A change is as good as a rest. Also a rest is as good as a rest too and I’ve been doing a lot of resting. Being pampered makes you surprisingly tired. I am still hopeful that I can finish a draft of the script in the next two days, even though I am off to Cheltenham tomorrow to see the first night of Grumpy Old Women.
There’s a notice in the swimming pool that has been bothering me for the last couple of days. By the impressive pool is a little circular bath you can sit in, with jets which shoot bubbly water at you. You might call this a Jacuzzi, but you would be wrong to do so, because there is a properly made sign on the wall saying, “This is a Whirlpool, not a Jacuzzi.” It seems an odd and pedantic thing to go to the trouble of making a proper sign to inform guests of the correct name for this feature. I mean there isn’t that much difference between the two in my mind and clearly not in anyone else’s either or it wouldn’t be necessary to point the truth out. Is one of the staff so anal that it annoys him when people say “I’m just getting into the Jacuzzi”? Is he fuming with anger wanting to shout, “Can’t you tell the difference? This is a whirlpool. It’s an entirely different thing. A Jacuzzi is a seated bath with jets of water in it and a whirlpool is… it’s just different OK? It’s an entirely different thing!”?
Is it so important that it is worth putting a sign up? And if it is that important, why not have another sign explaining what the difference between the two ostensibly similar things is, rather than just having this one which leaves you more confused than before.
Maybe there is some clue in another sign that is also by the Jacuzzi… I mean whirlpool. It says “This whirlpool is set at the correct temperature. This is a whirlpool not a Jacuzzi.”
OK, so maybe the difference is that a jacuzzi is slightly warmer than a whirlpool (though the whirlpool seems warm enough to me) and at least this second sign gets closer to explaining its own existence. I’d like to see it being a bit clearer, explaining both the definite difference between the two things and also indicating why it is so important to the Health Club that we must be informed of this. But surely the existence of this second incomplete sign makes the first even more incomplete sign unnecessary. Given the second sign actually has the same sentence on it. Why are there two signs and why is this so important to Forest Mere. In fact the question has been vexing me so much I have been completely unable to relax in the whirlpool for the worry of why it isn’t a Jacuzzi and why it matters so much to warrant two different signs. I am sure one of you will know why it is so vital to have these signs.

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