The Electric Michelangelo Read Online Free PDF

competition by a good few inches.
    – And halt.
    Jonty had five sticks in his hand, ready to plant next to the wet patches. This had to be done quickly before the piddle was lost into the dry sand or evaporated. The rules of the game meant you were supposed to stop the flow for a few seconds so that the referee could score. Then if you still needed you could finish up at your convenience. Jonty was bending down with his twig-flags when Cy hit him warmly on the ankle. With all the lemonade and the unkindness to his bladder things had gotten away from him. He couldn’t have stopped that day for all the toffee in Ashworth’s sweet shop. The boys jumped off the wall holding their stomachs with laughter while Jonty raced after Cy, yelling that he’d bash his head in and make him eat his shit. A woman cycling by on the promenade called out and shook her finger at them.

    – You filthy little buggers! I know what you’re up to. Clear off. People have to swim there!
    – There’s worse than piddle down there. Show us your knickers then, missus.
    – Filthy little gutter-snipes!
    The Bare Pool, as the structure had unfortunately and controversially been christened, was a large square enclosure that had been the scene of seasonal bathing since its construction in the late nineteenth century. Tidal dangers meant that it could within minutes become the scene of perilous gnashing waves, the sea churning up pebbles and muck against the wall as if cranking the handle of an enormous meat grinder. Several bathers had been knocked unconscious against its sides during the facility’s operation and been hauled out of the pool by passers-by. Cuts and bruises were all too common; the pool was not a masterpiece of engineering. At high tide it filled with muddy water, jellyfish, seaweed and equally unwelcome human detritus and pollution – Morecambe, as a thriving though modest resort, had, in truth, neither the capacity nor the economy to deal with the excessive summer waste and the masses were frequently reacquainted with their bodily expulsions as they swam or strolled along the beach. There were of course moral implications to swimming in the Bare Pool. Mixed bathing was a heavily disputed occurrence, rigorously condemned by the conservative council since men and women were first seen to be splashing and barking with laughter like rowdy sea lions in the pool’s arena, swallowing great gobfuls of salty water and groping at each other. It was simply not English to have men and women in states of undress carousing in the water and examining each other’s parts, they maintained; this was not the colonies, after all. Young gentlemen could clearly be seen to be aroused by the proceedings. Clubs were formed to regulate decency, with bathing huts and vans where old ladies in high collared dresses inspected the attire of lady swimmers to ensure that it was properly lined and old men tested the strength of hemming around the suits of gentlemen with the perfunctory tug of a finger. Fines could be levied for wandering inside the stipulated ten-foot distance to be kept between the partially clothed sexes. The names of offenders were, of course, to be published in the Visitor.
    Reeda Parks snorted loudly when she read about this development in the paper.
    – What will those tiresome old masons ban next, I wonder? Holding hands in the Alhambra picture house? The human body is god-given and sacred, Cyril, nothing of it is vulgar, don’t ever be ashamed of it.
    She lived by this mandate and was not ashamed to have him see her as she dressed, see her well-worn, menially utilized, hard-handled body as she bathed, with its broken stomach, the gathered flesh, the discolouration at its crevices. Nor did she make unkind comment about her fellow citizens, the weighty, the narrow, the bent or twisted, as some people did. He never asked her if that philosophy meant you could give up your body to those nocturnal procedures, including hers, which seemed