What I learned from my summer as a ‘pool floozy’
I’ve spent weeks being a rebellious pool dipper at hotels I’m not staying at and have no regrets. In fact it’s my new favourite hobby.
“Ooh I can’t believe I’ve not tried that one yet, I must work out how to get in there before we leave to take a dip”.
We are driving through our local neighbourhood in our rented golf buggy style vehicle and my eyes have lit up upon spotting yet another luxury hotel set back in some jungle gardens.
“Have you done them all yet?” asks my husband, amused by my new pursuit.
“No. And it’s bothering me. But I’ll do my best” I reply determinedly.
For the last month I have been strolling into hotels to sample their pools. I usually stay and do some work on my laptop, buy a drink, sometimes lunch and join a yoga class, all with one objective in mind - get in the pool. The area we have been staying in, Nosara on the Nicoya Peninsula - Guiones, has a blend of luxury and local. The luxury travel scene is very well established here; there are beautiful wellness retreats and leafy boutique hotels, tastefully done. They feel fresh, contemporary and cool, as if by just being there you’re going to walk out a bit more flexible and with better skin (can’t claim that’s actually true but we can dream). Whilst I consider the fact we’re even here as a luxury, we are by comparison not doing the luxury scene. We have a lovely villa, but now I’m here I understand that it’s very modest in comparison to what’s on offer. But hey, who says you can’t take a peek and dream right? And so my temporary career as a pool floozy commenced. Fired up by the ambition to try out all the pools in town I have found great amusement and joy in this goal.
Mischief.
When was the last time you felt mischievous? It’s a wonderful feeling, a very unique way of being. Somewhere suspended between silly and rebellious, belonging to an act that is subjective to whether you should be doing it or not. I reckon teachers quite like mischievous kids at school, the kids who make things entertaining and keep things interesting but don’t quite stray into the territory of making life wholly difficult. There is a shared humour, a knowing wink and smile. It can be as fun for the person turning a blind eye as it is for the mischief maker. I realised this extra dose of mischief in my life was novel, it felt good. As an honest citizen I have no desire to break the law, but a little bit of mischief, yes. I could use more of that in my life, and this was the perfect non-crime crime for me.
To understand my deep love of the pool, we must travel back to Worcestershire, in the Midlands, some time around the late 90s / early 2000s. The Midlands has some deep history with swimming baths, with the wider Birmingham area investing in baths in the 1800s to, I believe, get people to wash. This escalated to the desire to learn to swim, the development of swimming communities and eventually racing and engaging with the activity as a sport. If there is an anchor to my formative years it is the local swimming pool. It was called the Dolphin Centre and the time I spent there must amount to years. As children we would go there almost every weekend. It was £1.25 to swim. The pool was an old bath, not quite as stunning as some of the characteristic Victorian baths in the Midlands but the it was huge; 25 meters and at the deep end a whopping 3.5 meters deep. This was owing to the three diving boards, one of which was 10 meters high. And this is where I learnt to swim and enjoy the water. In this crazy deep pool and with free access to these boards. It seems utterly unbelievable now, but those boards were open for us kids to use. We would climb the steps and run and bomb off the end. Can you imagine that now? No chance. The pool was full of everyone from school, it was a hotbed of gossip, flirting, scrapping and snogging. We learnt how to dodge perverts, how not to drown, all the names of the lifeguards and would then attempt to get back to the changing rooms without dying - yes the pool was accessible by the steepest, slippery set of steps you’ve ever seen. It was the Wild West Midlands on water and I bloody loved it.
I went to swimming lessons and eventually Bromsgrove swimming club headed up by the legend that was Barry, the coach. My Mum even taught there for a while despite having a full time job and two kids. Not sure why or even if she was qualified. Lol. I was a strong swimmer, or learnt to be, but I was never one of the swim stars, there were some crazy fast kids in that squad, and the cabinets were full of trophies. I spent so much time there that I had a job lined up from the age of 14 because I knew the manager. As soon as I had my birthday I turned up to get my job and was put onto kids’ sports hall parties until I was officially qualified with my pool lifeguard qualification. The chapter that followed, involving walking up and down the poolside, blowing my whistle and cleaning the absolutely rank changing rooms, would gift me friends for life and some of the funniest memories I could imagine. We would try to work the Thursday shift, get ready in the changing rooms, go to the one crappy nightclub in town and then get one of the supervisors drunk to open up the center and eat NikNaks out of the machine. Mischief was thick and fast in that place.
I left that town as fast as I could, saving up enough money through lifeguarding to pay for a gap year before I went to Bournemouth university where I promptly found myself another part time job at a pool. I worked as a pool lifeguard from age 16 through to age 22 in 4 different pools. Only one rescue where I had to dive in, involving a girl in the wave pool and many ropes for kids falling off inflatables. I helped a girl crying in the loos who had just started her period, kicked out kids for bullying, tracked down a stolen bike, turned a blind eye when a bunch of lads took a known paedophile out the back and kicked the crap out of him, evacuated people from a burning sauna and held a poker face when we were all sat down and asked how a soft play sheep made it onto the roof.
I have always continued to swim, a love which evolved into open water swimming, snorkelling and cold dipping. But my love for the pool remains strong and these days I take a keen interest in the buildings and history. My nostalgic feelings for those heady pool days combined with an entirely different lifestyle and perspective, a worldly, well travelled one no less, has given me an urge to swim in all kinds of pools and to never let the opportunity pass if there’s ever a chance to dip. Which brings me right up to today; my pool floozy ways are perhaps the little Midlands Emma, landlocked in a small town who dreamed of a big bold adventurous life and yet with the absence of the internet, YouTube or aspirational ideas on Instagram didn’t really know what that even meant. The pool was where I dived into my imagination and went searching for my dreams. Plunging down over and over, beyond 3 meters, holding my breath and leaping from dazzlingly high diving boards gave me power, it gave me confidence, it gave me another terrain to move my body and express myself, it gave me drama and friendship. One day I was working a shift at the pool and my dog, Scamp, just wandered in. The pool really was a home for me. And perhaps that’s why I am able to muster up the confidence to strut onto a fancy pool side where I am not a resident and steal a cheeky dip, a few strokes, a handstand, an assessment of the build, the tiles, the ambience and then I’m gone. Another dip logged, another piece of home visited.
Emma x
Love this, your writing is wonderful. You can almost smell the chlorine!
I’ve been waiting for this post! Love it 😍 I am totally going to try and do this one day