A BRADFORDIAN who visited the Mirror Pool every day as her husband battled terminal lung cancer has said the water feature “saved her sanity”.

Su Mitchell, who has lived in the city all her life, described feeling “absolutely devastated” when doctors warned her husband only had months left to live.

The 55-year-old told the Telegraph & Argus: "I have quite severe depression and he’d been my support. I was faced with this situation where the person that I’d leaned on for quite a few years gets diagnosed.

"Over that summer he was rapidly declining.

"At only seven stone in weight, he became practically bed bound, and as well as caring for him, I was struggling with my own stress induced depression and anxiety."

But for two hours a day, the carer would leave her husband stocked up with drinks and snacks to go paddling in the water.

Su, who says she finds water "therapeutic", has since jumped in the central fountain fully clothed and even had water fights with teenagers.

She said: "I’d come down and just paddle around and without that I’d have really struggled.

"I wanted to be sure I could be home in 20 minutes if the worst comes to worst.

"I find I can stand and listen to the sound of water. I feel my tensions just flowing away into the water.

"I’d paddle round, stand there and all the stress would just drain from me.

"I’m prone to anxiety and depression and it’s almost like it starts to build up again. If I hadn’t had that it would have just built up and built up.

"It was the best thing that happened for Bradford, and if it meant a bit more on my Council Tax bill, then I'm fine with that."

Su's regular dip in the pool is no surprise for her friends and family, often joking "has it been raining?".

The local once stood "drenched" in a shop, having forgotten she needed to run an errand before her Mirror Pool visit.

Her love of water stems from childhood memories of splashing around with her mum and prides herself on "growing old ungracefully".

Su said: "I was bullied a lot as a kid, I didn’t find my childhood much fun and I've got to an age that I’m gonna take that back. I’m going to have my ideal childhood.

"Both my mum and me had self confidence issues but my mum was always ‘Let’s go for a paddle’.

"I got to about 50 and I remembered the first lines of a poem – 'When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go'.

"There seems to be this idea that we have got to become an adult, we’ve got to be sensible and we can’t play."

Su's husband is now in remission but her passion for the Mirror Pool still stands.

"We’ve had six years more than we anticipated.

"Whatever your age, gender, faith, ability or background, you can enjoy either sitting around, or playing in the water.

"This is my road to recovery."