Why can’t we enjoy a spa Scandi-style?

I went to a spa the other day for a massage. You might be going shortly, too. It’s nearly January. You probably feel like a spot of purging, someone with strong hands pummelling all those calories out of you. Or a kindly family member might have given you a treatment as a Christmas present.

A trip to the spa can be an excruciating experience, though. It’s awkward and faintly un-British, following a total stranger into a small room with no windows where you strip off your clothes so that the stranger can caress or beat you as required.

Others have no problem with it. The Finns like a good walloping with twigs. The Germans love nothing more than sitting naked in a sauna with all their friends. Even the relatively modest Japanese enjoy lounging in hot springs next to one another. But us? Well, we’d rather be sitting in the pub discussing the weather, with our clothes on.

The first embarrassing moment at a spa, I often find, comes right at the start, in that little room. How many layers do I need to take off? Just my shoes? Please let it be just my shoes. No? Everything? Even my underwear? Are you sure? Righty-o. Oh look, yes, thank you, there’s a little pair of disposable knickers for me to “pop” on. Terrific.

I conducted a poll about the disposable knickers by asking my boyfriend whether men are ever asked to wear them. They are not, apparently. Which is a blessing for various reasons but largely because they are so confusingly shaped. Does the big bit of the knicker go at the front or the back? Ladies, you know what I mean. I appreciate this is not up there with the great questions of the age – is there a higher power? Is it too late to get a bitcoin and can I spend them in Boots? Will I ever understand the plot of a Star Wars film? But the disposable knickers conundrum is right up there. Gets me every time.

Then you lie down and the massage starts. After the ordeal of the knickers, this should be soothing. You should be calmed by the dim light and the warm room and the whale mating noises they’re playing through the speakers. But you won’t be relaxed, because if you’re anything like me you’ll be worrying about the poor therapist having to touch your hairy legs, your dry, scaly arms and your feet! Gosh, you forgot you’d have to bare your feet and you know those talking trees in The Lord of the Rings? Well, your feet look like them. If you’re having a facial, like I also did on this recent spa trip because I am a thoroughly over-indulged human being, then you will also worry about your breath because the therapist has to lean over your face.

“Sorry I’ve got coffee breath,” I muttered, trying to expel as little air over her as I could.

“Don’t worry,” she replied cheerfully. “I’m used to it.”

Then the massage will finish and you have to remain lying down like an invalid while he or she goes to fetch the compulsory glass of cucumber water. So you drink that and put your clothes back on (hurrah!), before heading to the till where you have to pay or hand over your voucher. And this, THIS, is the most torturous bit of all. Because what about a tip? That therapist has spent an hour rubbing your stubbly, flaky body. You should tip. That’s the proper thing to do. But the treatment itself cost 90 billion pounds, and ten per cent on top of that might bankrupt you and you can’t tip by card and you don’t have any cash on you and, Oh GOD why did you ever think this would be a pleasurable process, you’re never going to another spa in all your life.

So, the message today, and as we look ahead into 2018, is – dare I say it – let’s be a bit more European about spas. Let’s loosen up. Let’s make like the Scandinavians and cast off our shame. And also – my own personal resolution – let’s learn how to put on a pair of disposable knickers (front or back? Anyone?). Happy New Year, all. It’s going to be a corker.