Pool Crashing
It's been about three weeks since I've indulged myself this...well... indulgently--laying out by the Hilton pool all afternoon in the middle of the week, straight up vacation style.
But when Lucy, my Godsend girlfriend came a'calling this morning for some poolside company, I took the bait! When the radio ad scriptwriting and website copy jobs are complete, and there's not much in the way of workload for the time being, beach me!
Like anything else in life, I do tend to appreciate it more when its occurrence is limited, which is why I've sought alternative ways of spending my days (even if that means tagging along for errand runs all day in the passenger seat, complaining the entire time like a five-year-old who skipped a nap. Don't ask me why it makes me feel more productive, but it does.). Besides, Rob and Shannon's visit left me with the most splotchy, uneven post-tanning skin and I decided I needed to wait for the ENTIRE top layer to peel away less I darken the existing tanned areas and make it all worse (I blame this entirely, by the way, on my current shortage of Bain de Soleil). Cue the violin.
Anyway, it's a delightful and sneaky (delightfully sneaky!) little benefit to living somewhere between a local and a tourist here that I am able to play the part of either role when it best suits me. For instance, when booking a catamaran cruise, since I've been living here for two years, I'm usually given the local rate! But when I want to crash a hotel's pool? Well, I just don my straw hat and pink beach bag and waltz right in like I own the place. Kind of like buying beer underage with a fake ID (egh em...so I hear)--confidence is key.
Crucial to this practice, however, is the pool crasher's golden ticket: the hotel's own beach towel. The Crane, Accra Beach, Hilton--I've got them all. Once you are in possession of one of those, you are officially a guest in any security guard's eyes. Because, honestly, who's going to sneak into their hotel, grab a beach towel unbeknownst to the alert attendant, and then return repeatedly posing as a guest? I mean, really.
Continuing my quest of exploiting the overpriced services and amenities of the Hilton and their $8 Diet Cokes (I like to think I'm sticking it to the man), Lucy and I always order ice-cold pitchers of the only thing that's free--water--and seek out the beach tubes that most guests either forget about or are unaware of. And today, a bonus! A girl who saw me scoping out the latest issue of People she was reading dropped it by my chair on her way up to her room. You may have to live here to understand what a little gem that is, but hey.
I know it won't always be like this. My comeuppance is looming in the distance, but not today. Or tomorrow.
My British bird!
