Last week was a bad week! For a variety of reasons!
But at least when Friday came I had a spa day booked with my Mum. A day of rest, relaxation and pampering and after the week I'd had I needed it.
We arrived early, donned our white fluffy robes and spent the first part of the morning chatting, drinking tea and sharing muffins. I know we were supposed to be doing something healthy like swimming lengths or sweating our bums off in the sauna but hey this was a day off! No work, no chores, no boy to tempt into eating sweet potato and chicken I'd lovingly prepared and he then throws on the floor, no CBeebies and no singing endless verses of "This Old Man he played...whatever number you care to think of and make up a rhyme for because I can't remember the words".
Once we moved into the main health spa we started off with the hydro pool. This is a small swimming pool, with bubbly edges like a Jacuzzi and then a three pronged water fall effect at the other end, where you can stand underneath the pounding jets of water and have your back and shoulders pummelled. I had a quick pummel. It was like someone sticking wet knives in the knots in my shoulders. Amazingly it felt good.
We then went on to have a swim and a proper Jacuzzi. You hear some terrible scare mongering stories about Jacuzzis but I tried not to think about it as I let the hot bubbles burst across my back. I could feel the stress of the last few days melting away in the heat of the water.
Mum has high blood pressure so the sauna and steam rooms are out for her but she was happy to have a lie down on a sun lounger while I went off to feel the burn.
I started slowly with the aromatherapy room, which is a gentle, mild heat and has a, frankly hypnotic, colour changing glass pyramid that I couldn't take my eyes off. The scents also change, from camomile to eucalyptus to lavender. In hindsight it smelt like an old ladies knickers but at the time the combination of slowly changing colours and the heady smell, coupled with the heat made me slightly trippy and I liked it!
Next I tried the sauna!
Now for some reason which I will never fully be able to explain I thought the sauna was empty and again for some reason and I have no idea why, I decided to start singing "Get Your Freak On" as I entered the sauna.
It wasn't empty!
There was a lone chap in there and by the sweat pouring off his ample body I guessed he'd been in there some time. Maybe a little too long. He was hot and not in a good way. I don't know whether he heard my appalling white, middle aged attempts at a rap song by Missy Elliot but there was that awful silence in the time that elapses when if he walks out too soon it'll look rude but he quite clearly feels uncomfortable now I'm in here so has to stay for a bit.
To fill the time he felt was sufficient to stay before he could legitimately leave he didn't just lay still and sweat. Oh no! He decided it would be a good idea to do some exaggerated yoga style stretches which involved him lifting his bottom off the bench and thrusting his middle to nether regions up towards the ceiling. He was wearing garish white , long swim shorts with large green flowers on and he wasn't a small man. I sat transfixed and relieved that my snatch of singing wasn't the most embarrassing thing that had happened in that sauna all day.
Just thank goodness my Mum missed it, with her high blood pressure she'd have never coped!
When I came out there was an Aqua Aerobics class going on in the main pool, the music was pounding and it was hard to hear
"A guy in the sauna was doing the plank" I told Mum
"Doing WHAT?" shouted my Mum over the din.
"No not THAT! PLANK!"
Over lunch I explained the yoga move plank before Mum's blood pressure shot up again!
After lunch we had treatments booked. Back, neck and shoulder massage, manicure and pedicure.
The whole day had been lovely.
On the way home we did what women do when they get together, enjoy each other's company in a relaxing and tranquil setting and bond and connect as females.
We discussed everyone else we'd seen in the spa all day and systematically pulled them apart.
"Did you see the size of that women getting out of the pool? She was like a beached whale"
"And what about the girl nearly wearing that pink bikini?"
"They weren't real for a start!"
"The bottom half of her body bore no resemblance to the top half. She had a tiny waist and legs but enormous boobs. She looked like one of those kids books where you flip half the page over and get a different head on a different body."
We drove home laughing and content that our own bodies were no where near as bad as we thought they were.
The sights you see when you haven't got your gun, hey!
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