Life colonises all environments, they say, but some habitats are more hospitable than others. Around our house, the swimming pool and its surrounding paving are actively hostile to small life – deliberately so, in a way, because we want to swim in clean water. We normally keep it salty and chlorinated, and the paving is bare, clean (-ish!) and dry. Nevertheless, life has found a niche – quite literally: there is a groove between the lip of the paving and the edge of the fibreglass which is a good little refuge for small-enough critters. Tiny skinks hide there, for instance, darting out to seize anything that lands on the paver above them.