26-06-17 The Lakes Club

Monday 26th June 2017

The summer holiday heat continues for us with more swimming in dreamy pools and mincing around exclusive clubs. Dubai gives us every opportunity to cool off from the 43 degrees and unrelenting sunshine with its community, club, resort and tower pools.

Today we refreshed ourselves after lunch with friends at Social Reform, at The Lakes’ Club, an exclusive members only leisure destination for The Lakes community. It was glorious bathing for hours in temperature controlled water.

We Hartleys of course live on the opposite side of Dubai nowhere near The Lakes and are most definitely not a paying part of this gated community but since we are here eating lunch at Social Reform with Camilla and Rio, and I am feeling lucky/cheeky/like a boss, that glimmering pool has our name all over it.

I sneak us in. Its through the double-entry/exit ice cream parlour that I usher through Kingsley, first ordering a small pot of strawberry ice cream for the child and spotting the glimmering pool my mind is fixed; we will swim today. We’re already in our bathing suits and with the quick opening of a doorway, we’re in The Lakes Club.

Hours later in the afternoon we’re walking to The Greens metro station for our commute home. On the train Kingsley’s clutching a little yellow car he found at The Lakes. He spots a sweet boy in his pram and immediately hands it over. The little boy beams, taking posession of the yellow car and adds it to his collection: one blue, one red, now one yellow. The boy gives Kingsley a thumbs up. Us parents burst with happiness/pride. The boys now begin swapping cars and do so all the way till our respective stops.

Language is no barrier to these little boys for play is universal. That wee boy has Downs Syndrome, I could tell. But Kingsley nor the boy cared one jot about language or ‘syndromes’. For all the achievements and milestones Kingsley surpasses (swimming unaided, diving underwater to fetch sunken treasures, nappy free and dry at nights etc) its this achievement that I’ll commend him for: acting with a heart too big for its ribcage; embracing any and all kids; showing genuine care for those he locks eyes with.

Kingsley – pools will come and go; this trememdous year-round warmth of our Dubai home will not be ours one day; we’ll not travel as frequently as we do. However the respect and kindness you show to strangers will being you riches you’re yet to understand.