I hate...

I don’t hate much. I’m pretty equable most of the time. But right now two things are really pissing me off. Thing One: Muppets. Sorry, don’t get them. Maybe I’ve not met the good ones but Kermit and Miss Piggy are just plain…irritating. I want to light matches to their fur. It’s not the puppet thing. Truly.  I like Mongrels. Actually I like it quite a lot. Probably more than I should. I started watching it thanks to James who,  come to think about it, probably shouldn’t be watching it at all. Anyway.

Thing Two. Valentine’s Day. I spent last VD ensconced in a spa, dodging canoodling couples in the steam room and being the only person eating solo in the candlelit and balloon-festooned dining room. Frankly I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.  I still wince at anything red and heart-shaped.

I abhor stiff scentless red roses. I don’t eat chocolates.  I don’t drink champagne. I can’t abide balloons. Why is it that Valentine’s infantalises normally sensible adults?  I’m all for indulging one’s childlike sense of fun but that doesn’t extend to going gooey over heart-shaped balloons. Balloons?  It’s not a fecking children’s birthday party for feck’s sake!  And soft toys – that’s the other one. Big pastel-coloured teddy bears clutching hearts with ‘I WUV U’. WTF? And the baby language – snugly wuggly baby waby possum blossom?

It’s not some middle-aged cynical thing either. I dreaded it way back when I was a teenager. In fact, the one time I managed to have a sort of boyfriend when I was at school, I ditched him the week before because I couldn’t bear the thought of it.  The certainty of disappointment. Not that he wouldn’t do or buy anything for it, but that it would be…dutiful.

 

And it’s not that I’m not a romantic. Far from it. It’s just that I can’t bear the commercial, fake, anodyne bastardisation of love.  As if love can be bought with a ready-made card and a token present. Or, even worse, the need to prove love with something expensive and ‘precious’.  The eating out in restaurants bits? Garn.  Something just smug and self-satisfied or dutiful and sad. Not to mention over-priced. 

If you like it, great. Go for it. Good luck to you. But me, I don’t feel love needs one special day out of a year. I don’t feel love needs to be put on show. I feel lovers should surprise one another with spontaneous affection/passion/preferably both or with seriously thoughtful, heartful tokens (not costly, but from the gut, heart, soul).  Whenever I’ve been out on Valentine’s Day (night) it’s all felt rather…sad somehow.  So many people going through the motions; doing what is expected; proclaiming to the world ‘I’m in a couple’ like it’s a badge of honour, a sign of belonging. It’s like cats spraying or dogs pissing - marking out their territory.  Should you really need to do that? 

Anonymous declarations of tormented passion, on the other hand?  Now those I do get.  I’ve always felt that Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be for the neat cosy couples, for domestic love, but for insecure, unhitched, unbridled, unsaddled, unstirruped (any more riding adjectives?) lust and longing. Is there anything more delicious than the frisson of an unknown admirer?  My father never understood this. Bless him, he’d send me Valentine Day cards with ‘Guess who?’ written on them in his very distinctive script. I loved him for it (he knew how the girls at school would sneeringly ask, ‘And how many did you get?’) but I craved mystery, suspense, not knowing. I wanted imagination, for feck’s sake!  

Did I get it? No. Not really.  Maybe that’s why I’ve got such a downer on the whole thing. Maybe I’m lamenting a youth in which I didn’t get the hopeless gesture; the beautiful poem; the gut-wrenching love song; the hand-made card…that nobody took me on a midnight picnic or swimming in a moonlit lake or blindfolded me and…

Or maybe I’m just odd. 

‘Can we agree not to do Valentine cards this year?’ I said to Adrian this morning.  I would hasten to add that I had bought him two packs of socks from Tesco earlier in the week and presented them to him with a wry, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, darling.’ 

‘Are you sure?’ he said, his eyes first registering alarm (that he’d clearly forgotten) and then lighting up at the realisation that he wouldn’t have to race down surreptitiously to the shop.

‘Absolutely. You know I hate it.’

‘Well yes, but that’s what men are supposed to say, not women.’

I frowned, with a slight growl. ‘Are you saying I’m a man?’

‘No way, fella,’ he replied. 

Valentine's Day? Aaghhh

So. I’m at the Lifehouse spa, newly opened in Essex. I had an hour to kill before my ‘Oriental Bathing Experience’ so figured I’d do a few laps of the pool and then have a bit of a steam.

Hmm. Interesting. In the UK, the ratio of men to women in spas tends to be about 1 to 40. Not here. It’s raining men. Except, hang about, they’re all neatly paired off, wandering obediently behind their women.

People are swimming in tandem; the pool loungers are all cosied up. Ah well, it’s Essex. Maybe they do things differently here. So I swim a bit and then figure I’ll steam to loosen up before my massage. So I wander into the steam room and, umm, there’s a couple sort of writhing on one of the benchs. Okay, so I’ve been to tons of spas and maybe I've led a blinkered existence but I haven’t hit this situation before. Soo...what’s the etiquette here? Do you:

a) back out, apologising?
b) get terribly British and go ‘tut tut’ and ‘well, really!’
c) shout ‘Aha, so this is where the action is!’ and jump in, scaring them senseless?

Actually I just sat in the opposite corner, stared at the little lights in the ceiling which were going through the colours of the rainbow in a somewhat frenetic disco sync and said a silent prayer that in this particular spa people wear swimsuits. And felt the waves of frustrated lust and intense irritation crashing (rather unpleasantly) against my etheric body. And thought, well tough.

So they went (letting in tons of cold air, the miserable bastards) and I stretched out on the bench. And was floating off into a little reverie when the bloody door opened again and a man (solo this time) poked his head round the door.
‘Er, are you okay in there?’
‘Fine, thank you.’  Or I would be if the bloody heat ever rose about tepid.

And off he went. Took me a moment to realise that he probably thought I’d passed out. Or maybe he was just on nookie patrol for the night.

By now it had dawned on me. I know, a bit slow. It was Valentine’s Eve, nay Valentine’s weekend, and the good men of Essex were collectively fulfilling their loverly duty and taking their sweethearts to spa.
Bloody great.

I really intensely dislike Valentine’s Day…  It's not that I'm not romantic, just that I loathe public displays of obedient dutiful romance. I hate boxes of chocolate, can’t abide stiff red roses, feel nauseous at schmaltzy cards. Why do people feel the urge to go out to restaurants on VD (see, even the initials are disgusting)? The prices are inflated and everything is heart-shaped. Is it that they feel the need for public validation of their relationship? It’s so effing smug. Okay, I’ll shut up. I did write a whole post about this but decided it was too curmudgeonly by half so deleted it.

Anyhow, I took myself off for my Oriential bath thingy. Now I’m not a huge fan of spa ‘rituals’ – I think they’re a bit gimmicky… I’d rather have a really good massage (preferably deep and probing) from someone who knows their stuff rather than be wafted and floated around for a couple of hours. But, I have to say, this was rather nice. My therapist promised a ‘journey’ and by heck, we positively hurtled round the East… We went from Thailand (foot massage) to Bali (tsunami shower) to Malaysia (I forget what happened there) and…oh, I lost track for a bit and came to in Japan where I was left soaking in a pool with a crashing waterfall and a mug of Jasmine tea. At this point the lovely Victoria told me to make a wish and then sprinkled me with gold fairy dust. And then something else dawned on me. The baths were huge and the massage rooms had several couches.
‘Do you usually do more than one person at a time?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes…this is great for…’
Don’t tell me…

Anyhow, there was exfoliation and I said a fervent thank-you, this time to myself for remembering to defuzz so I didn’t look like a demented hobbit. For this gratitude goes go to Bluebeard’s Revenge, which really is pretty damn good stuff..
And then Hot Stones massage. Now I’m sorry but I just don’t really get hot stones… but by this point I was somewhere beyond mellow (despite going solo through the bonded pair bathing experience) and Victoria, bless her, really made some serious inroads into my stress shoulders… And she did that lovely stroking thing… I tell you, if I ever become a millionaire I will pay someone to stroke my back for several hours every night. Now that would zap my insomnia, I bet you.

Anyhow, I came out after nearly two hours in a bit of a daze and decided I couldn’t be bothered to have dinner. I could hear the champagne corks popping in the restaurant and had a pretty fair idea of what it would be like. So I went back to my room and stretched out on the absolutely vast bed.

And then I did think…well, actually, this is a bit of a waste really...

Particularly on Valentine's Day... ;)

http://www.lifehouse.co.uk/