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.
I raised my voice over the din of Amazonian panpipe muzak: ‘I’d like a Massage Treatment Journey, please.’ A young girl in the waiting area giggled.
The ultra-tanned, ultra-eyebrow-tweazed assistant in white regarded me sternly. ‘I’m sorry, we’re fully booked,’ she said, as the panpipes gave way to a cascade of chimes conjuring waterfalls. ‘Would you like to make an appointment? Let me see…you’re looking at the end of next week…’
A spa next to the Spar opposite Tooting Common really ought not to be booking into next week, even if it does have grammatical pretensions. So I hurtled back out, and went on a chocolate, crisps and fags journey instead, which brought me no peace and clarity at all but cost £7.69.
A few hours later, I was sitting with my friend behind the counter of her children’s shop, reading magazines and gorging on carbs, when another friend burst through the door. ‘Oh, my god,’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve just found the most divine therapist. He’s £60 an hour and he’s completely cured me of everything.’
This was not to be poo-pooed. ‘Do you think he could de-stress me?’ I asked her. ‘He can do anything,’ she replied, with absolute certainty. ‘In fact, I’m going to get him round here now.’
Within 20 minutes, a handsome, bearded man turned up on the doorstep and after perfunctory introductions said, ‘Is there anywhere we can do The Work?’ He said The Work like that, as if it had capital letters. I was now breathless with anticipation.
My friend donated her stockroom, and so we crept downstairs and perched in the basement amid boxes of tutus, train sets and zoo animals. I cannot really say I remember anything startling about the therapy that ensued. But after a few minutes I was crying like a child who wanted a zoo animal. After an hour was up, we came up from the stock room, swapped numbers and agreed to have another session soon.
‘Well, are you cured?’ asked my friend, looking up from Grazia. I said I didn’t know. It wasn’t until I went to bed that night that I realised something had happened. I wasn’t itching. I looked down at my hands and they were completely clear. No eczema. The next morning I realised I had slept properly for the first time in a month. I looked at my hands. Not a patch of redness.
When the children’s shop therapist rang to ask how I was feeling, I told him he had performed a miracle. ‘Oh good, that’s great,’ he said, as if I had told him I had just had a really nice cream-cheese bagel. It was all very odd.
I Googled him and it turned out that he was, until quite recently, an actor. ‘This is ridiculous,’ I told my friend. ‘He can’t be a healer with mystical powers. He used to be in Peak Practice.’
‘I disagree. If Jesus was going to come again, he would definitely come back as an actor in Peak Practice.’ I’ve thought about this a lot, and I reckon she’s right.
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