Our first visit to view our house naturally included exploring the plot of land. Among the chest high grass and weeds we could see old railway sleepers, tangles of wire and sundry evidence of how things used to be before years of neglect turned everything into a tinder-dry wilderness.

Near the house, in what was to become the garden, was an old deposito. Most houses in the countryside have one of these brick-built water tanks. Many of them have been turned into small swimming pools, now that mains water is available. As neither of us swims well, a swimming pool has never been very appealing, but somewhere to sit and cool off on hot summer days is a different kettle of fish.

As we cleared the garden, we could see that the deposito was an irregular almost square, about eight feet by eight feet. It was so full of rubbish and dead vegetation that we could not tell how deep it was. For two years, it was ‘the next thing to be done,’ but we had no idea how waterproof it would be (probably not very, as it was not full of stagnant water) or how difficult it would be to render it usable.

Then our dear friends up the valley decided they wanted something bigger than their ‘footspa.’ This dear little fibre glass pool was going to be thrown over for a more glamorous, larger, younger model.

‘You could have it, if it comes out in one piece.’ One sentence kicked off a chain of events. We measured hastily and worked out that the footspa would fit almost exactly within the footprint of the old deposito. If we could bed it in on some sand and not break any planning rules, we could soon be sitting sipping a G&T, up to our necks in cool water.

Fast forward a year or so – you can’t rush these things – to this day last year, and the footspa arrived on a lorry at the front gate. Lorry drivers here are totally unfazed by having to lift things into confined spaces, often with no obvious access. I had the camera ready.

Our young friends, William and Paco, did a fantastic job removing the blocks of the old deposito and recycling them into a low retaining wall. The footspa was going to sit on solid rock not far below the surface of the garden, so we needed to build up the level a little around it. What a fabulous way to lose some of the accumulated rubble, rocks and rubbish that would otherwise have needed a skip!

We knew the footspa was much the same size as the deposito, but we were fairly well gobsmacked at just how exactly it fitted across the diagonal of the hole that removing the deposito left. It was clearly meant to come and live with us.

We felt that a tiled surround would look very out of keeping in our garden. The irregular shapes would be a nightmare to fit around in any case. After some investigating, we decided that some artificial grass would be easy to maintain, comfortable underfoot and would look nice, as long as we could find something not too virulently green and tacky-looking.

From the early days of planning to transplant it, we had joked that it was an Olympic size footspa. With time, extra description and hyperbole were tacked on, until, by the time it was inaugurated, it had officially been dubbed The Ingham Memorial Executive Olympic Footspa.

TIMEOF was up and running just in time for the arrival of visiting family and the grandchildren loved having a dip to cool off before bed each evening.

As well as being great for splashing about and cooling off, TIMEOF was an important part of the recovery of my broken ankle. Learning to weightbear and walk again was very much easier with the support of the water and the edge of the pool to hold onto. The jets provided a soothing massage after each session of walking around on toes and heels, bending and stretching the ankle. I am convinced it shortened considerably the time it took me to get mobile again.

It would be hard to overstate the impact TIMEOF has had our lives. It has helped me become steady enough to putter about looking after the animals and enjoy being in the garden again. It gave us the impetus to crack on and get that area of the garden sorted and it brought the outside space together to feel like a proper garden and not a building site.

Thank you, Inghams. Thank you very much!