I feel well enough without any of the 'wellness' malarkey

The place was Vichy, queen of French spa towns. In the thermal establishment, the masseuse was appropriately business-like. She dipped into a little packet and handed over something scrunched up. I opened it out to reveal what looked like a face mask to keep Covid at bay. The masseuse then indicated that it was less for the face, more for the loins. “In English, we call this a ‘posing pouch’,” I said. “Few gentlemen wear them in public.”

Distress clouded the young lady’s face. She pointed to the changing room. “We give an all-over massage,” she said. “Unless you put this on, your buttocks will not be hydrated.”

“My buttocks have survived many years unhydrated,” I said. “They’ll manage another morning.” And so, still clad in knee-length swimming shorts, I climbed on the table and lay flat on my front. The masseuse began kneading my calves. Within moments, I slept.

Then I woke, got off the table, thanked her and headed for the bar. Ha. Some bar. With grim inevitability, it dispensed only water, fruit juice and herbal tea. Sharing the space were people wrapped in both white dressing gowns and the self-satisfied serenity of those worshipping at the temples of their own bodies. Oh dear. When you need Scotch, a sausage roll and something sonorous from Status Quo, a verbena infusion misses the mark by miles.

I don’t wish to exaggerate. I felt pretty good there in the spa. But, then, I usually feel pretty good at 11 o’clock in the morning without the intervention of wallet-draining treatment and drinks which no sane adult would contemplate at such an hour. In other words, I feel well enough, without any of the “wellness” malarkey. 

Wellness, eh? That crept up on us – or on me, anyway – with little warning. And we’ll doubtless hear a very great deal more about it as 2023 swings into gear. I remain puzzled. There we were, going along ok, confident that long walks, longer lunches and a glass of Bowmore at nightfall kept us tip-top in terms of health (the historic term for “wellness”).

Then, suddenly, the world – and the holiday world in particular – became swamped with spas, hammams and 85 ways with kale. Every luxury hotel started offering a menu of treatments, from enzymatic heat to shiatsu – which, apparently, involves “pressure along the energy channels” rather than the placing of small dogs along one’s back.

Teetotalism is said to be breaking out all over, too, giving renewed impetus to the 1830s work pioneered by Joseph Livesey and the Preston Temperance Society. Granted, if our visits are anything to go by, my hometown is some way from succumbing to total abstinence – but, elsewhere, alcohol is apparently old hat.

Listen up right now, and you will hear, across the nation, the Pharisaic rumble of: “Yeah, actually, Geena and I are doing Dry January this year.” (I tried it once – well, Dry January mornings, anyway – and gave up when it transpired that herbal tea doesn’t work as a lunchtime aperitif. Or as anything else, frankly.)

Obviously, I don’t care whether people drink or not – as long as, if the latter, they shut up about it. Tragically, folk once addicted to alcohol subsequently become addicted to talking, and writing, of its renunciation. This has reached saturation level. If I read one more account of how a former drunk, once face-down in a late-night rogan josh, is now bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 24/7, I shall reach for a blunt instrument. 

And let us not even start on Veganuary. Again, eat what you damned well want through January – or at any other time – but keep off the moral high ground. That’s where the sheep graze. Should you persist, I’ll counter-propose Baconuary, crashing into supermarkets to shout at people buying quinoa, agave syrup and oat “milk”.

But it is spas, whether within hotels or holiday destinations unto themselves, which perplex the most in this brave new wellness world. I’ve been round a few and emerged little the wiser, and none the fitter. In Vichy, the day after the pouch episode, I was favoured with a four-handed massage by two women dressed as slaughterhouse workers: wellies, overalls, plastic aprons. Their massage would, they promised, “feed my skin”. 

“Fabulous,” I said. “It so rarely eats.” Nor did it seem to on this occasion. I divined no difference, though the ladies seemed happy, discussing their children’s primary schools, so it worked well for two out of three of us. 

Elsewhere, in Digne-les-Bains, a handsome woman in a swimsuit massaged my thighs under a shower, entirely failing to relieve the tension she was herself creating. In Baden-Baden, by contrast, I was impressed less by the succession of saunas and subsequent cold plunge and more by the fact that, in the final pools where male and female circuits intersected, vast naked women breasted the water like a flotilla of Graf Spees.

Meanwhile, at Serge Blanco’s thalassotherapy place in the French Basque Country, willing folk daubed me with mud and trussed me up like a broiler. They then shut me in an oven, a process whose main purpose seemed to be to provide light entertainment for the staff. I emerged red and knackered. I doubt they ever did that to rugby legend Blanco who, anyway, seemed more interested in criticising his sport’s overuse of substitutes than in talking mud and ovens.

And who could blame him? Spas, treatments, saunas, exfoliation, Naga massage (“inspired by Buddhist serpentine deities”), aromatherapy – the entire wellness caboodle, for heaven’s sake – not only has no positive effect on me but are also as tiresome to discuss as your neighbour’s mother’s peritonitis.

The mind, my mind, freezes over. I’d no more embrace this stuff on holiday, or even on a short break, than I’d choose to spend leisure time in a psychiatric ward or an MOT centre.

These are, anyway, profoundly un-British concerns. Granted, our aristocrats used to take the waters at Buxton, Bath or maybe even Montecatini but these were just a front for gambling, debauchery or finding a husband for a difficult daughter.

All the while the Orient was developing spa processes with essential oils, for the stimulation of internal energies (nuad bo rarn) or for “applying vibrations to blocked areas” (Tui-Na), we were leading the agricultural, then the industrial revolutions, pioneering almost everything which has since ensured the prosperity of the rest of the world, higher wheat yields through mining, textiles, steel and heavy industry.

Along the way, this funded forebears who then came up with penicillin and much else of more use to mankind than putting barely visible fish in a bowl that they might nibble bare feet.

And, when we relaxed, it was with meat-paste sandwiches and jugs of (non-herbal) tea on the beach. Wellness jaunts involved charabancs and fish-and-chips at Bangor, or boots and beer in Lakeland. Massages were what happened when no-one else was looking. And the rest? Can you imagine your grandparents giving themselves over to anything inspired by Buddhist serpentine deities? Really? In Portsmouth, Pontefract, Penrith or Pontypridd?

Me neither. This was not the British way, and still isn’t, if I’ve got anything to do with it. The British way sees the body as the means of getting us about, both to the forefront and to the front line, and not as temples to be adored with unguents and herb-infused chilli oil massages. We keep them trim with food, drink and bursts of football, rugby and cricket.

On holidays, we might increase the input of wine and output of bathing. That’s in line with tradition. But I, at least, will be honouring our heritage, in 2023 as in every other year, by keeping entirely away from any suggestion of ayurveda or qi energy flows. Most of all, I shall maintain a policy of distance from posing pouches.

Would you go on a wellness retreat? Please share your thoughts on the habit in the comments below