Cultural Review: Spa Day.
Wendy’s great. She’s my mom and she’s just great. I know everybody thinks their mom is great but mine really is. For one I call her Wendy to wind her up and in turn she calls me Gobshite. All out of love. Wendy is her name, I haven’t just made it up. Sometimes to really wind her up I pretend I’m a used car dealer and call her ‘Wend’. She called me this morning to tell me about her new cats (called Malcolm and Trevor) and a breadboard and something to do with a safety gate. I have no idea what she was on about but it was great. This is in Wendy’s Garden:
It’s been there for about two years. I asked her what it was and she said it was ‘Dolly head on a stick for the coronation.’ She’s not a racist. By November 2010 she (dolly not Wendy) had developed some interesting eye-weed. I can’t find the photo though. It’s lost in the depths of my old BlackBerry. It’s got dinner in it. The BlackBerry.
For my birthday Wendy bought me a Spa Voucher because she thought I would ‘ruin their day’. Meaning the staff. She knows me well.
It took three months for the appointment to come around and boy was I nervous. There’s certain protocol about shit like this that I simply don’t know. Spa stuff has passed me by, it’s simply not on my radar. I got my nails done once when I lived in Leicester. Barely ten minutes after I left the salon, I smooshed my colour when I jammed my hand in my pocket looking for a lighter.
(OT, Wendy just text me. It was a photo of Trevor the cat in my dad’s pants drawer.)
So today was the day. I shaved my legs but didn’t wash my hair. Batiste, thou art my friend. I thought if I was doing it properly I’d get oil in my hair. (Never had a ‘cosmetic’ massage before.)
I had to run the gauntlet of wheelie suitcases that is known as Marble Arch/Park Lane. It’s like if they hosted an episode of Gladiators from Victoria coach station. But less leotards. I nearly wore a leotard due to having NO IDEA WHAT TO WEAR TO A SPA but Wendy said no. Just wear nice pants. I’ve lost 2 of my best pants this week so I’m down to the newest pair with only one hole in them. I swear my washing machine has a vendetta against me. It doesn’t understand the command to ‘wash’ and then adds insult to unwashed clothes by putting holes in everything. I walked past the old Met Bar and missed the old days of All Saints and the Gallaghers falling out in a haze of coke snorted off the back of a Smash Hits Award. *sigh*
I got to the Hilton early and asked directions of the top-hatted lackey stood out front. I think I flummoxed or unnerved him. He was about 23 and apologised for mangling his words and didn’t make eye contact. I still had clothes on at this point. I made my way into the foyer and look at this:
Sorry about the grimy pic. I think I got some lunch on the lens of my phone. Anyway, CHECK THIS SHIT! I don’t fucking belong here. Look at all that marble. It was sooo hard holding in the desire to skid along it on my knees. There were women in traditional African dress and men in traditional Arabian dress and me in traditional 1994 Kerry dress. (GnR tee/leggings/DMs…told you I don’t belong here.)
I got tooken (new word alert) to a waiting room where there was an old woman who looked like a hand and two girls from Up The North who had just had their hands done. Apparently people come to this place from everywhere. I just went on my local bus for a bit. Brunette Up The North girl mashed her nail polish as I had in the past so I helped her do up her coat. Then she did a little cry. The Hand Lady had gone away and she wanted her nails all nice for seeing Gary tonight. So I stepped up. I took her to the nail bit and touched up her hand job. Make yourself at home they said so I bloody did. Brunette Up North Girl gave me a kiss and it was nice. We didn’t lez-off but Gary’s got competition.
A little tiny nervy lady turned up and asked if I wanted a drink of Champagne. I hate Champagne but this shit is free/pre-paid for by my mother so I said Yes Please in my best telephone voice. (No accent, clipped vowels, minimal swearing.)
Here is my first glass of Champagne next to a bundle of twigs tied up with rattan in a dish made of slate. I think this was meant to be relaxing but I just found it jarring. Like imagine if you saw a dog in a Miu Miu poncho on a speedboat in Morrisons? Jarring. Beyond the ‘conglomeration’ you will see what I can only presume is a urine sample left behind by a previous client.
I tried to be polite and sipped the plastic glass of bubbly (not allowed glass where people flail and walk round barefoot) while reading Happyslapped By A Jellyfish but was constantly distracted by the woman behind a screen to my right getting her nails done while somehow also on the phone. The general gist I could get, her brother was in the Middle East and had been kidnapped and she was on the phone to various news agencies. WHILE GETTING HER NAILS DONE!! And she had a fake Chloe bag. Yeah, I know this shit. There’s lots you don’t know about me.
A tinier lady who had eyelashes that looked like this:
came and introduced herself as Holleeeee in a voyce likeee thissss. There was this vague gentle edge to her tone that I took on myself throughout the experience but she still sounded like a beauty-school cop-off and I loved her. She was about fourteen and had more make up on than I own. She informed me we were running behind due to the Qatari Royal Family (?) and would I like a complimentary Manny or Peddy while I waited? I assumed a Peddy was a Gary Glitter (bumming) which I politely declined and asked to be made to look like this: 
Turns out I don’t know the lingo and she meant Mani. As in manicure. As I said…too much protocol. This is why I’m not down with Sci-Fi or El Presidente (American President) movies. You have to presume a certain amount to get the hang of shit and I simply don’t. I start every new film as if I’m an idiot who’s just stepped off the boat from moron’s-ville that has no newspapers or Wikiepdia.
She took me to The O.P.I. Cabinet and asked me to chose a colour. She kept carrying my coat and bag around which made me feel bad. She was tiny and my bag is full of uneaten packets of Reeses and bus tickets and scissors and brown money. I asked for black. It was all gone. I asked for grey. All gone. BARBIE PINK!! It was available. Yowser, I’m in luck.
She sat me down, I gave her the pre-amble about not using cotton wool (phobia, don’t ask) and we got down to business at the special desk. She asked me if I was a student. I did the customary HAHAHA I’m thirty (you idiot) thing and she then asked what I did for a job. I don’t know why this came out of my mouth and I liked this girl, I did, but I told her I was a stunt-man. Cue twenty minutes of me talking about my work on James Bond movies and being the body-double for the tram-driver in Coronation Street. As she was massaging my hands (nice) she asked about the cuts which I always get on my hands for unknown reasons following a heavy weekend. I told her I had to plunge may hands into broken glass for a cut-away shot in Blue Peter. An absolute lie. She went on to ask who had bought my treatment and I told her about Wendy. “Why didn’t you come together? Most people do.” Me: “I don’t like talking to people.” Holly barely spoke to me the rest of the treatment.
She guided me into the treatment room where I was instructed to undress to my pants and ‘take off your bra if you’re wearing one’. You got eyes girl? We’d both lose an eye if I weren’t. She left, I disrobed and jammed my clothes in what turned out to be a meter cupboard, and put myself face down on the bed-with-a-face-hole with my feet dangling off the edge. Hoolllleeee returned, and started with a weird sex-voice to talk me through the treatment. I was first to have a back-exfoliation but apparently I didn’t need it as I have ‘astonishing skin’. Who even says that apart from potential sex-affiliates and even then it’s an odd turn of phrase. So we went through the motions much like a stale marriage as I drank more champagne through the face-hole with a straw.
I was concerned about the presence of whale music but luckily it was a loop of pan-pipes and sitars. Over and over. And over. Until the fire drill started. If the Twigs On Rattan On Slate was jarring, this was an assault to the extremities. If I’d had a penis It would have gone inside me in protest. Hoolllleeee brought me more champagne and a fresh straw to say sorry and also because I had chewed my last straw into what resembled an umbilical cord.
What followed was the most confusing massage in the universe. It felt like there were at any one time at least three hands on me. She moved around the bench and there was always one hand on my back. We discovered the most ticklish part of me is my right side-boob. A surprise cheeky reach-around and I spazzed out and punched the wall. Are we still allowed to say ‘spazz out’? There is no modern substitute that fits the bill to a tee. And Wrick from the Young Ones says it and he’s Wright on guys yeah? Yeahhh.
I felt a snuffling round my ears and I didn’t work out what she was doing but later I found out she’d took out my earrings without me noticing. This reminds me of the time I went for one of my (many) hip operations. I told the pre-op ward staff and nurse and my surgeon that I was on my period and was using a tampon and would they need me to take it out? No, no, no was the reply I received. I’m not ickish and thought ‘fair enough’ if they say it can stay. However. I came round several hours later. Got my bearings. Wendy was by my side as usual with Waitrose ready-meals to shove in my gob. I leant myself up all woozy like to inspect the damage and there was paper pants on me. With what appeared to be a child’s cot mattress jammed inside. “Hello? HELLO LADY!!” I proclaimed to the nurse. She explained they’d removed my tampon during surgery and replaced it after with what the hospital had to offer. THEY TOOK OUT MY TAMPON WHEN I WAS ASLEEP?! I wouldn’t have been bothered but I fancied my anaethetist. Moral of the story: never believe what a pre-op ward tells you. Even that bit about you not dying in surgery.
And three-two-one we’re back in the room. Hoolllleeeee asked me to turn over so she could undertake my facial. She did a discreet lift of the towel so I could shuffle round but still passed comment on a piercing only a peeper could notice. Cheeky Hollleeee. She commented on my lovely skin AGAIN. I think she was trying to get off with me. She asked me about my skincare regime. I told her in all honesty, I take my make off twice a week at best and am constantly picking eyelash glue off. She giggled. I was serious. She offered to take my make up off first. I told her I haven’t put make up on since Saturday but go ahead and get rid of it. She giggled again. She seemed put out that I’ve never took care of my face and it’s mostly brill yet she cleanses/tones/moisturises twice a day and looks like shit. I was inclined to agree but blamed the nod on a sick-burp from the fourth glass of champagne.
She finished up. I snaffled my fifth glass and took this pic:
Then I mashed my wet-drunk manicure in the meter cupboard as I retrieved my clothes. I trolled the feedback form with tales of bum-touching and skipped off home. I left feeling as relaxed as the first cigarette following a Sunday morning wank.
Four stars, I could get a taste for this. Would be five stars if I could smoke in the spa.
Also, great-rack. 