Exploding pool

The phone rang at 12.40am forcing me to jump out of bed to stop it waking the children.  I wondered whether it was Jules phoning from Shanghai getting confused about the time difference.  It was the next door neighbour, Frances, who had been woken by her daughter saying she thought our pool had exploded.  I stepped out onto the deck overlooking the pool and indeed the pool had exploded and 60,000 litres of water had escaped.  Geoff came over with a torch and we went down into the garden to take a look.  There was a huge gaping hole in the side of the pool and the sound of running water.  We went into his garden and saw lines of leaves strewn over the lawn deposited by the flow of water. Frances tried phoning the neighbours at the end of their garden who had clearly born the brunt of the water but there was no answer.  It was almost impossible to go back to sleep.  In the morning the first thing I did was check that it hadn't been a dream but there was the massive hole and an empty pool.  At about 8.30 there was a knock on the door and the neighbour whose house we were worried about was standing there.  The water had flooded his downstairs study room with a watermark at about 50cm up the wall.  The water had destroyed all his daughter's exam notes.  His daughter had sat her final HSC exam on Friday.  Talk about lucky timing!  He was fantastic and very understanding about the whole sorry saga. 

The pool was a train wreck waiting to happen - we just wanted to try and eek another 2 years out of it because having just done the renovation there's no question of replacing it at the moment.  We're trying to look on the bright side and the kids are excited about the possibility of getting a trampoline now that we have the room.