Skin deep

Over the years, I've had various opportunities to go to spas to have days of 'pampering'.

I've never had to think much about rejecting the idea out of hand. For one thing the people who offered to accompany me have often been, well, um..... boring.
For another, I know full well that however pleasant it may be to be massaged and perfumed and smoothed and buffed and polished, the me that emerged from such a place would be the same me that went in, glowing a bit, smelling of whatever is currently considered a fashionably nice smell (ugh) but basically, no more beautiful nor any less short, fat and scruffy than usual. And with flat, limp hair (crushed by being heated and wetted and not properly blowdried) to boot.

Further, the people who normally go to these places seem to be either of the tall, slender, fair-skinned and elegant variety or of the rich, elderly, 'don't give a toss what the pretty girls at the spa think of me cos I'm rich' variety. Or the fit, spa-tanned, muscular, 'look after myself and work out regularly' variety.

Undoubtedly this is a wild and inaccurate generalisation. But add to my preconceptions, a horde of pretty, manicured, smoothskinned young women and (presumably a few tanned, fit, young men) on the staff to give ladies the right ideas about why they came to theses places and maybe you can see why my sad toenails, baggy stone and a half in the middle, geriatric warts*, 'once bitten, many times shy' fingernails, and lousy posture loom large in my imagination as I consider walking, flat-footed, through the portals of one of these temples to the pretty body.

To enjoy going go to such a place, I'd have to erase my preconceptions, suspend disbelief, enter into the fairy tale and accept my physical curses as minor things which everyone has seen hundreds of times before and couldn't care less about. Big mental effort! Much easier to keep the body more or less contained with it's layers of clothing and forget about it :)

And of course there's the money. Not that I have the least hesitation about spending large amounts of money on my personal desires. Oh no! If I wanted something enough, I'd sell my own grandmother to pay for it. **

What has given me pause on this occasion is that I am invited, nay, pressed, to accompany two friends to a local spa and neither of these ladies are even slightly boring (though they are both tall, fairskinned, elegant and younger than me). At the pub they both twinkled eagerly at me and demanded to know why not? Threatened to do a pub collection for my birthday. Worse (or at any rate, more) Barney has assured me that he'd happily allow the housekeeping to be spent in such a worthy cause (not that he has any more say than I do about how it's spent). (I hope he doesn't imagine that a day at a spa would change my image much).

They'd both be great fun and brilliant company and I feel a bit as if I'm digging my toes in just out of grumpiness. But the fact is it's just that this isn't one of the things I've ever wanted to do.....
For heaven's sake, for the cost of a day in a spa I could instead spend a day walking with wolves or visiting Eden or stay in a really really wild and wonderful place in the mountains and commune with nature and my camera. I could get wet and muddy and wear big boots and waterproofs and catch sunlight glinting in a wolf's eye or watch the sunrise over a single thorn tree on a misty hillside. I could hobble down to the bottom of a waterfall and see spray making rainbows or to the top and watch white water plunging. I could have a delicious, unhealthy, chloresterol-laden dinner and a glass or two of heavenly wine. I could buy a new lens! Even, I could get some new spectacles! I could go to a nature reserve and see shy birds flitting. Maybe even otters or wild deer. I could spend a day playing violin at a course. If I was thinking about my personal well being, I'd go for a day's Alexander technique.
Well, see, if I wanted to spend more money on myself it wouldn't be on being pampered. It would be on doing something!

There is a wolf sanctuary 6 miles or so up the A4. Hey, you two gorgeous ladies, want to come and walk with wolves one day? We could howl at the moon :)

Oh and did I mention that the camera wouldn't like the steam?
*Not the kind that witches of the old fashioned fairy tale kind sport, hairily on their chins and noses, but a vast quantity of mole-like things which inconveniently scatter around my neck and chest. GB has kindly monitored their presence for me ever since she first asked what they were and was reassured that they don't hurt. Still there Grandma :)
**She's dead now but she would have fetched a very good price - a fantastic, delightful and beautiful old lady. In fact, no, I wouldn't have sold her. She was too precious.