Firstly, convince the wife that buying a pool of such a huge size was not at all impractical and that with just a few tweaks to the garden everything will be fine.
Spend a small fortune buying chemicals online, all the while being unable to shake the uneasy feeling that you may well pop up on several NSA and MI5 radars.
Await 3 weeks for a 3 day delivery from some shady as fuck Chinese company.
When it finally arrives make sure you have at least 15 neighbours/family members available to carry the thing - with considerable difficulty into the back garden.
Spend many constructive minutes ranting and raving at the packaging as you try to extricate the fucking thing from the box.
Ignore the instructions. They're in Chinese anyway.
Spend many, many hours happily trying to fathom out whether pole A should indeed connect with pole E although pole C is identical - although cleverly it actually isn't, the difference being so tiny you'd need an electron microscope to see it. Ignore the wife swearing and doubting your parental heritage - she's probably just on her period.
Smirk at her smugly when finally, after about 7 hours you have something resembling a pool sitting lopsidedly on the lawn. Duck. As a pole that is obviously just a spare comes arrowing in your direction.
Spend another 5 hours assembling the fucking ladder - it's design so devious and evil it would flummox both Krypton Factor contestants and NASA engineers alike. Ignore her, she's on her period remember?
Finally, you are ready to fill your Super-Smashing-Funtime-Swimming-Pool©.
Attach the hose to obviously the most inappropriate tap you can find. Turn on tap. Spend 2 hours mopping the floor, walls, ceiling, dog and any spare children that just happened to be nosy (and stupid) enough to show curiosity in a badly fitting hose adapter.
Spend more money on correct hose and fittings.
Start to fill your Super-Smashing-Funtime-Swimming-Pool©. Moan to anyone who'll listen that the water pressure in your area is complete shit and it's taken 3 hours to fill 1 inch of a 5 foot deep pool and you don't know how water companies can justify their charges.
Come back half a day later to find that one set of the pool legs are now rammed tight against your fence causing it to bow alarmingly in the direction of your neighbours greenhouse. Try in vain to heave the whole damn thing away from the fence not realising that your pool now weighs about 7 tonnes. Swear at the wife and her inability to hold the end of a tape measure correctly. Duck.
Look in the pool and realise that you actually have a shallow end and a deep end. Wish you had bothered to actually root out the spirit level before you started.
Explain to the wife that it's ok and we'll just have to start over that's all. Duck.
Empty the pool using the handy drain plug. Wait a day for the flooded garden to dry. Apologise to the neighbours and offer to pay to have their dogs muddy footprints removed from their carpet, sofa, bed and car seats.
Realise that the handy drain plug is 4 inches from the bottom of the pool. Spend many, many hours bailing out the remains of the water with a bucket that you can only half fill because it's "too heavy" for the wife to carry to the drain. Silently shake your head and question her parental heritage.
Spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds on top soil, sand and astroturf on which to seat correctly your Super-Smashing-Funtime-Swimming-Pool©
Repeat all previous construction and filling steps steps - remembering that's she's probably still on her period, hence the language.
Finally it's filled!! It's level and not threatening anyone's property!
Fuck about with the chemicals for a bit, ignore the dip tests and shit, fucks sake you gotta GCSE in Chemistry, how hard can it be?
Begrudgingly use the hot tap to avoid giving the kids hypothermia. Watch the gas meter spin wildly, get scared, so go out and spend hundreds of pounds on an electric pool heater. Watch the electric meter spin wildly.
Pick a kid at random for Beta testing.
Throw kid in the pool and wait 20 minutes. When eyes are as bloodshot as Christopher Lee's Dracula pronounce gleefully that the correct amount of pool chemical has been attained and that everyone can now enter the water.
Spend 2 more days emptying and refilling pool after Timmy swallows a load of water and explosively vomits in it.
Finally, put your arm around your wife, smile sweetly at her and say everything was worth it when looking at the glee on the kids faces.
Duck.
