Further Under the Duvet (3 page)

Oh, Holly Golightly, how could you! You try telling that to my credit card. See, what happened was, I had to buy a christening present for my god-daughter. But once I got into the cool gorgeous halls of Tiffany, something
happened
. I’m at a loss to describe it really, except that there were all these
beautiful things
. Pendants and bracelets and watches and earrings and little silver handmirrors and cute chunky key rings. Suddenly it made perfect sense to buy presents for everyone I knew for the rest of their lives. I decided to buy my sister a silver wedding-anniversary present. Even though she’s not actually married. Or engaged. Or going out with someone. Then I wanted to buy my son a watch for his twenty-first, and it didn’t seem to be any impediment whatso-
ever
that I don’t have children.

Eventually I got away with the christening present, a ‘piece’ for my sister for Christmas (it was April) and a birthday present for Himself, five months hence. And then the wrapping began – an intricate and deeply soothing process, like watching delicate, skilled hands produce the finest origami. First they put the item in a little black velvet box, then in a duck-egg-blue suede pouch, then in a matching Tiffany box tied up with a white satin Tiffany ribbon and, finally, in a Tiffany bag. I’ve never seen such beautiful wrapping. I felt so overcome it was a bit like the part in
The Great Gatsby
when Daisy weeps, ‘I’ve never seen such beautiful shirts.’

Out in the street, it was like waking up from the most pleasant dream. Except that I had all these duck-egg-blue carrier bags and a great dread of receiving my next credit card bill.

First published in
Cara
magazine, September 2002
.

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not an outdoorsy type. If I was offered the choice between white-water rafting and being savaged by a rabid dog, I’d be likely to tick the box marked ‘dog’. The reasons for this? One, I have terrible hair. Four seconds in the rain makes it all bulk and frizz up so that I look like Sideshow Bob. Two, I am very short (five foot one) and haven’t worn flat shoes since 1992. As a result my calf muscles have got so used to being held up by four-inch heels that they’ve shrunk to the point where if I put my heels on the floor, my toes lift up. Three, I am almost life-threateningly lazy. See? Not outdoorsy, not outdoorsy at all. So how come I’m marching along at the crack of dawn, in (almost) flat boots, a mountain looming on one side of me, an atmospherically spooky lake on the other, with hailstones pinging off my face like gravel and – the weirdest bit of all – I’m not even crying?

A little background is necessary, I think…

Here’s how it is: I love spas. More than life itself. I’ve become so dependent on them that I’ve completely lost the ability to relax by myself. I also love my husband and I like to keep him about my person at all times, rather like a good-luck charm. But my husband – who happens to be a man – doesn’t like spas, he fears and mistrusts them. So how to reconcile the two?

Enter stage left, the Delphi spa and mountain adventure centre. I already knew about the adventure centre: a hellish place featuring macho, Snickers-eating, hair-frizzing, kayaky stuff. A place where young men stood around in luminous raingear and urged each other on to fling themselves off cliff-faces. Right? But I knew less about the spa – until it started winning awards. The
Observer
included it in its ‘ten of the world’s best spas’. Mariella Frostrup, doyenne of spas, described it in the
Mail on Sunday
as ‘a world-class spa’. Now, wait a minute – a world-class spa in Ireland? Surely some mistake. We Irish do other things well – the craic, the chat, the charm. But spas? Since when?

Well, since now. Thrilled that we had found the perfect combination – I could stagger from treatment to treatment, he could look death in the face in a variety of ways – Himself and myself set off for Delphi. It’s in the west of Ireland, in Galway. Or possibly Mayo. I never managed to establish which – both are keen to claim dominion because Delphi’s the kind of property which would add kudos to any county’s portfolio. Either way it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. The further west we drove the more soaring the peaks became, the narrower the roads and the wilder the landscape. Silver streams hurtled down the steep-sided mountains to become noisy, fast-flowing roadside brooks. Purple shale and blue-toned limestone broke the surface of the fields and the only living beings we saw for miles were the hillside sheep, coloured luminous orange and pink.

Finally, we arrived. Delphi is in a valley, surrounded almost entirely by mountains which manage to be magnificent, without also being stern and intimidating like a head
nun humbling you for not doing your homework. It’s so beautiful, it’s almost shocking.

The first sign that these Delphi people knew what they were doing was in the architecture. Visitors to Ireland, especially those poor Dutch and Germans who love ‘the nature’, get terribly upset about the rash of ‘bungalowitis’ which afflicts much of rural Ireland. Primrose-yellow mini-ranches aren’t exactly simpatico but there was no fear of that here. It was
very
simpatico – a unique building made from glass, local wood and stone, with funny rounded roof windows so that it looks vaguely like a biggish hobbit dwelling. None of Delphi spa is actually underground, but if it was, with grass growing on the roof for hobbity cattle to graze on, you wouldn’t be at all surprised. It kind of has that magical Bilbo Baggins thing going on.

We stepped out of the car to be greeted by the best smell in the world – turf smoke hanging in damp air – and in we went.

With the interior architecture it’s as if they’ve tried to bring the outdoors indoors. Everywhere there are massive windows to maximize the views of the surrounding landscape; natural wood like beech and bog oak (no nasty orange pine) is used for flooring, doors and walls; the curving oak reception desk is supported by slabs of slate, like a mini-Stonehenge; a double-height chimney breast looks like a dry-stone round tower; everything is curved, undulating, sinuous; a stream on the property flows through the hallway, covered over with thick glass. (You can amuse yourself by jumping up and down on it to see how much weight it can take. Answer: a lot. I did it one night after my sixteen-course dinner – more of which later – and it didn’t even squeak.) But it’s extremely
comfortable. There’s no point in having all that natural stuff if it’s not, otherwise I might as well just stay in a tent in the field over the road. The brochure describes Delphi’s style as ‘contemporary-luxury in a wilderness setting’ and that sums it up beautifully.

And so to the treatments! The list contained all the usual suspects – facials, massages, wraps, etc. – with more interesting stuff like reiki, Hopi ear candles and soundwave therapy also available. But I was starting with an aromatherapy massage, or so I thought. Due to a misunderstanding on my part, I’d inadvertently booked myself a wrap and I’m not a wrap-lover. (For those who don’t know, you’re smeared in smelly stuff and wrapped with your arms clamped to your sides in a heated tinfoil blanket and left to sweat it out for forty minutes or so. Some people swear by them. Not me, however.) I expressed my dismay and right away the calibre of the staff became clear. Sympathetically, calmly and quickly, another treatment room was found and my massage was back on track within minutes. In fact, over the few days I was there, it seemed as though all the therapists – a mixture of Australian, British and Irish – have diplomas in advanced kindness. They were warm, intelligent and compassionate, the effect of which is priceless. Technical proficiency counts for nothing if you feel your masseur is sniggering at the state of your thighs.

Which brings me to food! Everyone knows that you get fed well at spas; the days of wringing hollow laughter out of a diet of lemon juice and lettuce leaves are long gone. But nothing had prepared us for such quality. Dinner was a four-course extravaganza featuring organic vegetables from their
own garden, locally caught seafood and any number of added extras – amuse-bouches, palate-cleansing sorbets, home-made bread, etc. It was fabulous!

The following morning Himself went off to learn to surf (it was November, can you imagine!) and I put on my white robe and took up position on a lovely padded lounger yoke in the health suite and stared out dreamily at the ever-changing light on the mountains, as I waited to be called for my treatments. It’s all so beautiful that at busy times the area can get a little crowded with towel-based baggsying of loungers that is positively Germanic.

The health suite also has a steam-room, a sauna and a roomy jacuzzi with more stunning views. However, because high expectations are simply resentments under construction, let me make a couple of things clear: there is no pool and no gym. Purists might recoil in horror but, frankly, I was delighted. Whenever I go to a spa I bring my trainers (after first blowing off the cobwebs) and
even as I’m packing them
, I know they won’t see the inside of the gym. Nevertheless I’m always bothered by a vague, naggy guilt for the duration of my stay, so a gym-free spa was a giddy relief. The general manager explained that the Delphi ethos is to persuade people to try something different from their usual regime. Instead of forty-five minutes on an incline on the treadmill, they might try a two-hour hill walk – on a real hill.

I nodded in agreement as all this was explained to me, but I was thinking:
They’ll never get me out there, think of the hair
. Instead there was a great choice of indoor activities – meditation, t’ai chi, Pilates, relaxation and yoga (hey, it’s just like Parrot Cay!) – and I decided to do Pilates. Lying on the
floor, in a beautiful peaceful room, doing tiny quarter-inch movements, seemed easy-peasy. Until the next morning when I found it so hard to get out of bed I thought I’d had a stroke in the night which had paralysed me. I wasn’t making that mistake again so next day I went for the relaxation class because I thought it would be the usual lying on the floor imagining myself bathed in beautiful gold light. Instead we were taught new breathing techniques – prana something or other – which involved snorting like a horse over and over. The three of us in the class were high-pitched and giggly with mortification and as I left I decided I would never do a relaxation class again: it was way too stressful.

Meanwhile Himself was having the time of his life, having Snickers-eating, near-death experiences twice a day. His brushes with mortality included abseiling, rock-climbing and surfing, although he could also have tried high ropes, kayaking, water-skiing and all kinds of other terrible, terrible stuff.

The funny thing was that although I’d fully intended not getting dressed from the moment I arrived to the moment I left, the place worked its magic. It was just too beautiful not to get out and about. Local highlights include Killary, Ireland’s only fjord, but instead I went to Doolough, a nearby lake overlooked by jagged peaks with an icing-sugar coating of snow along the top. It was like experiencing the Himalayas, without any pesky inoculations or jet lag, and so breathtakingly wonderful that I didn’t even mind the consequent hair shame which, let’s make no bones about it, was
extreme
.

First published in
Cara,
February 2004
.

Amere half-hour late and we’re off! Foghorns blare, lighthouse bells ring, the walls look like a starry night at sea – very atmospheric and exciting. Almost as exciting as my front-row seat – friends had made a special visit to my flat to admire my Row A ticket. Also to help with my wardrobe angst. Dreading gimlet-eyed fashion scorn, the look I finally decided on is ‘Inconspicuous but with a Marc Jacobs bag’. It seems to be working. Well, at least I haven’t noticed anyone mocking openly.

‘Paul’s collection (those in the know never say designers’ surnames, I’m told, and I’m keen to fit in) is Nautical but Nice and there are sailor stripes, anchor motifs and double-breasted Captain Birdseye jackets. Beautiful clothes – but the models are doing the most ridiculous walks: lifting their knees high like dressage ponies or horses who are made to dance in circuses.

The catwalk is so low and close that I could reach out and touch them – in fact, reach out and
trip them up
, and suddenly I’m terrified that, with one flick of my leg, I might just do that. (The same kind of irresistible impulse I sometimes get on high buildings to fling myself off.) Luckily I’m distracted
by a girl clopping lopsidedly down the catwalk in one red stocking and one shoe – a style statement? It’s then I notice the single shoe at my feet, smiling up sheepishly at me. Clearly, it’s fallen off, but professional that she is, the model has carried on. A dilemma ensues – should I replace the shoe on the catwalk for her to reclaim on her return or am I running the risk of causing a dressage-pony-style pile-up? Leave well alone, I decide. And then, surprisingly quickly – only fifteen minutes – it’s over and I go for lunch with Marie and Liz,
Marie Claire
’s editor and fashion editor respectively.

We actually have to run – ‘Betty’ (see, no surname, I’m a natural at this fashion stuff) has the temerity to start just under half an hour late and by the time we get in, our seats have been given away and some poor
Marie Claire
underling is ousted to make room for me. Mind you, I can hardly be bothered – I associate ‘Betty’ with beige cowl-neck jumpers, boring as anything. But I’m in for a shock: once the girls start down the catwalk (still doing the same silly knee-lifts, like baby giraffes learning to walk; obviously not just a Paul Smith thing) I’m transfixed. I love these clothes. Like,
love
them. Grown-up boho in bright spring greens, faded grape and aubergine. Funky tweed suits appliquéd with flowers, soft jersey dresses and a fabulous green-leather coat that I almost leap from my seat and wrestle from the model’s back. Excuse me, what’s going on? But, ah! Here it is! Mr beige cowl-neck jumper, we’ve been expecting you. Oh and here’s another. And one more – admittedly brown, this time, but what is brown, if not beige, only worse?