Sins Of The Flesh

Just come back from a sejour at a Michelin 3 star spa in the south of France. Much lighter in wallet and a bit lighter in weight. 

After a delicious menu minceur in the evening, off for a consultation with the doctor in the morning.

Do you eat much sugar, perhaps too much fruit? he asked,  palpating my Rubenesque stomach. Yes, I thought, grapes - especially the fermented variety which comes out of a bottle. Peeved to learn I needed to lose more weight than my husband we went off to the wooden chalet for the treatments.

 

It looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel but without the witch to fatten us up. The rotten eggs smell hit us as we entered.  Warned that the sulphurous water, to be drunk twice daily, could either make you constipated, or the reverse, I asked what the first treatment would be. With a supercilious curl of her French lips Madame replied le bain de boue, or, more prosaically in English, the mud bath. 

“I feel like a right nonce in this bathrobe and slippers,” spouse grumbled as I went in for the first treatment, coyly named filiforme.  More like a ffffiring squad, straight out of a Goya painting. Ahhh! The pain! Hosed with a high pressure jet (think of a Kärcher machine) whilst standing starkers against a wall. An infernal punishment for the crime of getting fat. Reeling from shock, trying to remember the French for instrument of torture I was ushered into another room. The door opened to a metal contraption straight out of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony - an elaborate torture and execution

device that carved the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin as he slowly died. I quailed, wobbling on the white bed as the thing, with its 12 funnels, moved menacingly downwards and the jets started. I knew what would be carved on my stomach-

FATTY!

After that, thank God, the gentler touch of a paintbrush which slathered my prone body in white mud, ready to be lovingly wrapped up in clingfilm  and muslin. Et voila! I was left to baste like some chicken en papillote. I looked up, oh no, Les Mouches! Two of them buzzing around, threatening to crawl into my private cocoon. Ever tried swatting flies with your arms and hands immobilised? 

Quite.

Bilingual blaspheming didn’t work either so I was reduced to snapping my head back and forth and blowing at them furiously. Quite an existential, angst - ridden experience. Not exactly relaxing.

The lovely white mud bath was a welcome treat, like swimming in warm custard. I must have looked a sight, especially when it came to showering it off. Spouse certainly did, when we went in together. Perhaps not best for honeymoon couples...

Privacy in the thermal jets swimming pool allowed me free reign to splash about to my heart’s content. Like a chubby porpoise I contorted my body’s wobbly bits to face the full force of the underwater massage. I’d just turned my back to expose my chubby bottom cheeks, my fesses for a really good pounding and -

Yikes!

Would have looked good on YouTube:-

Woman in spa gets surprise colonic irrigation.

I’ve had a few massages in my time but nothing like the spa special hand and fingers job - like geese pecking my bingo wings and inner thighs. Pride and the cost of it all stopped me from getting up and running out.

Slightly traumatised and exhausted by all the relaxing treatments I sat down to another wonderful calorie controlled meal.

Three Russians on the next table had a slightly different take on their special diet. Ordering bread with every course and eating the table decorations (shiny red apples from the orchard) were definitely not de rigeur. 

“Is that guy with his wife and her sister do you think?”

“Not necessarily.”

Hm. 

After several more sessions and three bouts with a personal trainer we came back glowing with health. 

I really loved that custardy bain de boue. Trouble is, although I forsook them for a week, without withdrawal symptoms, I do rather like my cheese and wine and chocolates...

Stuff it. Perhaps in the next life I’ll come back as a hippopotamus splashing happily in my mud bath and eating away to my hearts’ content.

Parfait!