Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 August 2005 11:47:33
I took my mother, my sister and my sister-in-law to a day spa on Wednesday. It was my mum's Christmas present and i thought it would be nice to give her a relaxing experience. Unfortunately, relaxing is not one of the words I would ever associate with my mum.
If you've never been to a day spa, and particularly this one, which is in Central London, it is a very odd experience and not unlike (I should imagine) being in a very posh mental hospital. They take away your clothes when you first get in and make you wear a bathrobe all day. they also take away all your belongings and replace them with an electronic locker key tag. My mother couldn't work her locker and they had to give her a new tag.
So there you are, with a whole load of other bewildered looking ladies, wandering around in your dressing gown and not allowed any glassware -only plastic. People are asleep all over the place and my Mum cannot stop giggling. As you can imagine, I am desperate for her to have a good time, so i am the least relaxed i have been in a long while.
During the "Colour Therapy", things went really awry. We all had to lie on these couches which were a bit like dentist's chairs and look at some colours being flashed up on a screen. It was a bit like being in a school drama lesson, except they had promised soothing music and aromatherapy. There was NO music. I began to wonder whether I was becoming deaf, and then my sister got the giggles very very loudly (bear in mind there are about 25 women in this room, trying to "relax". My mother leans over to me and stagewhispers "I'm not feeling very relaxed" at which point I get the giggles too.
Then we spend some time in the turkish steam room, where my sister proceeds to spray us all with cold water "waterfight styley". Oasis of calm serenity? I don't think so. I spilt chocolate on my bathrobe during lunch (bottle of sparkling wine helped calm Mum a little) and then had to wander around in a chocolate stained dressing gown for the rest of the day. mum kept trying to persuade me to nick someone else's robe when i came out of the swimming pool, but I explained that would be rude.
All in all, a hilarious day. I came out FAR more stressed than when I went in... but it was nice to spend some time with the folks.
Now we're trying to plan Greenbelt. And I want to meet the nice wibsite people and I've just found out I am supposed to be helping at a panel discussion at the same time as the meet=up. Cross now. But I think i can come to the end of the meet thing - cos the panel is between 4 and 5. What a pain though. Now I'm really not feeling very relaxed