Nightswimming

I like swank hotels. I like mints on my pillow. I like nice little bottles of toiletries and lots of fluffy towels, and toilet paper folded into aeroplane ends, and people making my bed for me and turning it down. (though, apart from the chocolate mints, which are delicious, I think turn down service is ridiculous – as if people are really too fastidious to come into contact with the coverlet on the bed, or to turn back their own sheets. I can’t think of anything more silly except perhaps this)


I like people calling me Miss all day long and making my stay “more comfortable.” I’m not saying I think it’s good for my soul. I just like it.

I’ve had a great few weeks where I got to catch up with old friends and new babies, and I saw a few of them in Phoenix. I had a conference out there, hence the swank hotel, but I arrived early to visit las amigas. It was a lazy, hot holiday weekend and I wandered round in a sort of responsibility-free daze. After a looonng nap on Sunday, Bryn dropped me off at my conference hotel, and following a few preliminaries, I went for a swim at dusk. It was one of those warm evenings after a hot day when you aren’t sure whether the water or the air is warmer, and you glide around enjoying the reprieve from the hot-oven-blast daytime temperature. There were pink clouds, palm trees, the electric sound of what I believe are cicadas, and flaming braziers above the spotlit pool with little fountains and sprays all over the place, and only the occasional dive-bombing French child to break the serenity.



The only downer was that it was actually a pretty fantastic conference, so I had no excuse to blow off a session or two and go sightseeing. Ah, my unswerving dedication to duty. Ruins my vacation at every turn.

(Speaking of the conference, one of the highlights for me was when they showed a clip that I have been trying and failing to find on youtube. It’s where a well-known anti-tobacco advocate throws water over an industry executive’s cigar when he’s smoking on TV in violation of fire code, and the executive gets really mad and tries to start a punch up. It’s made funnier by the fact that the executive hits like a…well, like someone who’s never hit anyone before, and while I’m all hurrah for pacifism, it does point to the fact that starting your career of violence on television at the age of about 60 (hm, he’s probably actually 45 and looks older because he SMOKES) isn’t the best plan. )

The only reason I can think of to live in Phoenix is so I could be called a Phoenician, because that does sound fascinating and exotic. I realise it’s not news to anyone that Phoenix is hot in July, but I can’t help mentioning it. The air just feels thick with heat. And it just doesn’t get cold at night. Which actually made late night and early morning swims delightful.

Bryn probably thinks I don’t love her because I never take pics of her self or kids when I stay with her, but somehow the camera never leaves the bag.

So here’s Britt’s spawn. He looks like he’s about to cry, but I promise he loved being tickled.



Britt and me out for life-saving gelato.




And here’s Phoenix at night.







And this is the Dial building, which apparently was built to look like a bar of soap. Can you see it?