Real life | 13 August 2011

Looking for ways to de-stress and cure my eczema has become my new obsession. It is very, very stressful. It often involves hurtling to the corner shop to buy chocolate. I was doing this the other day when I happened upon a little spa next to the Spar. It was called the TenSixTwo treatment rooms. I have no idea why it was called this. I can think of nothing very symbolic about those numbers. I thought at first it was something to do with the street number but it wasn’t. This is the sort of thing I worry about. I worried so much about why the TenSixTwo was called the
TenSixTwo that I was very quickly more stressed than when I went in.

I looked at the treatments on offer. There was something called a Nailtique that promised to shape and paint my hands, which I didn’t much fancy, and many other unfathomable procedures that would apparently result in ‘peace’ and ‘clarity’. There were facials — including one called an ‘environ active vitamin 60min’ — hot wax treatments, warm wax treatments, combination wax treatments — top, leg and g-string; ¾ leg and Brazilian/Hollywood — and so on and on.

Right at the bottom of the list, when I had almost given up hope, I found a range of massages, or what I assumed were massages. They weren’t called massages, you see, they were called Massage Treatment Journeys. These cost £29 for a 30-minute journey, which presumably took you on a brief package tour of peace and clarity, to the full 90 minutes, which was £60 and obviously took you to heaven and back in the first-class sleeper carriage with a full buffet service.