A day off from the podcast, but that just meant I lounged around the flat a bit longer, watching series 4 of Breaking Bad, before sluggishly heading for the gym. I have been keeping up with my fitness schedule pretty well and although I was mildly hungover today I was up for a mini-work out. As with last year I am finding the Virgin Active gyms attitude regarding towels a bit mean spirited. They have free towels which they hand out to members of that particular gym, but if you come from a different Virgin Active they officially expect you to pay a pound to borrow a towel. Given membership is about £70 a month as it is it seems a bit steep to charge another £30 a month, but it's their right I suppose.
As often as not they don't ask you if you want a towel and you can just help yourself anyway, but I have made it a Colditz style mission never to pay for one of their towels and have all kinds of clever schemes to get free towels, that would make the Towel Committee (of Colditz) very happy.
My first line of defence is to have borrowed a towel already which I am going to keep in my rucksack for the month in case I come on a day when they really crack down on my towel loopholes (but how will they find out - I am certainly keeping schtum about it). I intend to return the towel on the last day, so it's not stealing, but that is my insurance - one that I haven't had to use yet due to my ingenuity at towel pilfering.
If they don't ask me if I need a towel I just take one anyway and this works quite well and I haven't been stopped yet (and that's how you can get one in the bag), but if they do ask I always say I don't want a towel, because I know they are going to follow up by hitting me with the charge. Then, ingeniously I sometimes head into the cafe and pretend to read the Metro and then when the person who let me in is not around or is distracted I just walk over, like I was an Edinburgh Virgin Active person and just take the towel anyway. This scheme has a 100% success rate and I have never been caught. On days when I can't be bothered to go to that level of subterfuge I just say I don't want a towel and walk off as if heading for the changing rooms. But then I come back and grab a towel anyway. 100% success rate. If the guards are being vigilant it's not the end of the world, because there are loads of free clean towels down by the swimming pool rolled up on the sun loungers anyway. Their attempts to get a pound out of me are ludicrous. They have towels literally lying around. If I have time I might dig a secret tunnel from the changing rooms to the front desk so I can nip back that way and access the towels through a secret hatch, but for the moment my various schemes are working well. Take that Ian Virgin and your chutney eating friend Richard Branston. I am winning the Fringe and I can't see anyway that you could find me out. Even though at least one of your staff is a fan and saw my show last year.
But if somehow one of the staff see this blog and find out what I am up to and decide to put an end to my free towel shennanighans I will just point out that all the cool members of staff don't enforce it. Only the ones who are pricks. Do you want to be one of the pricks? I don't think so. Just let me have a free fucking towel you knobs, and if you don't then I might take my little shampooing my hair with shit anecdote to the press. Oh yeah - I went there.
