Church, Crisps, Spa, Reduced Sugar: A Better Week

Devoted readers will be happy to read that this was a much better week than last. On Sunday Benedict Ambrose felt well enough to go to Mass. He hadn't been since Assumption Day, and that was in a wheelchair. After a Member of the Men's Schola waved us over and suggested B.A. sit by the radiator in the choir pews, I surprised both B.A. and myself by bursting into tears.

Afterwards B.A. still felt well, so we went to someone's Sunday Lunch across town and had a lovely time until B.A. felt fatigue approaching and I called us a taxi. 

The next day, while I was typing madly away in my home office (formerly B.A.'s home office), he stuck his head through the doorway to inform me that he was going to the nearest grocery store for crisps. I was rather alarmed, partly because it was already dark outside, but B.A. was adamant, and  he returned half an hour later, only a little shaky, with a beer and crisps. 

He repeated this feat on Tuesday or Wednesday; I can't quite remember which for the big event of mid-week was my trip to a spa in the countryside. The various reviews I had read about this spa led me to believe it was heaven on earth, with doting attendant angels. Sadly, it did not live up to the hype. 

First, the spa, which is on the estate of a stately hotel, was a little hard to find. The estate was not well signed. I got lost in the drizzle, which was not at all nice. Then when I appeared in the antechamber of the rustic, rather Nordic- (or Canadian-) looking cottage, the young women at the desk were slow to amble out to greet me. This left me standing about awkwardly, wondering what do to with my wet boots, broken umbrella and damp raincoat. 

Eventually, however, a young woman did come out to greet me. She invited me to sit down and fill out a form, and my heart sank as she handed me a tablet, for the last thing I wanted to see on my day away from my desk was another screen. However, I filled in the electronic questionnaire and put on some slippers and followed my lacklustre hostess around the spa. She swallowed half her words and gave me the impression that she had been doing this for so long, she just no longer cared. Even worse, the sauna area was noisy; a drill split the air and visible through the ceiling-high windows were men building an addition. The "herbal sauna" was quite useless except for women who don't mind sweating in their bathing suits in the full view of construction workers. (Nobody told me to bring a bathing suit, incidentally, so it's a jolly good thing I did: the spa's bathrobe was not voluminous.)

This spa is rather expensive, so I felt rather cross about the noise and the men and the lack of customer service, and felt crosser still when a woman who seemed to belong to the spa (or the work project) in some management capacity began to pull open the door to my mud-treatment chamber while I was towelling myself off. The lazy girl who had showed me into it and given me inadequate instructions as to what I was supposed to do had neglected to turn over the sign that had "Busy" written on the back. 

"What kind of place IS this?" I cried. 

I started writing out my one-star review in my head, but then when I trundled out back to the desk, I was met by a blonde angel of a masseuse/facialist who bore me away to a lovely room with a massage table that was like the world's most comfortable single bed. There I spent an enormously 90 healing and relaxing minutes, and I forgave the spa for my stupid first two hours.  That said, I made darn sure I got the Afternoon Tea that was part of my Spa Day package. 

After I hoovered my Tea and tired of reading fashion magazines, I got dressed and floated back out into the rain.  I caught the country bus back into Edinburgh and went to my Polish lesson, during which I was inclined to be merry. 

In conclusion, the trip to the country spa was worth the time and money and initial aggravation because of the splendid masseuse-facialist and the chance to lounge around in a luxurious Nordic-chic interior reading Scottish Woman, The Tatler and Vogue.

Naturally I returned to work on Thursday, which was American Thanksgiving, so all the American journalists as LSN were on holiday. This meant that the Canadians had to buckle down and write our little heads off for two days. 

Fortunately I felt so great after my spa day that this was relatively easy to do, and I was given a very interesting assignment that involved translating five pages of astonishing revelations about Saint-John-Paul-2-as-Mystic and then scrolling through video to find exactly where the Monsignor was recorded saying those things. The biggest challenge was figuring out how not to translate "piaga" as "plague" and "orde" as "hordes" because, hello, islamists, like nazis and commies, are at any rate human beings. I failed in the latter attempt, but in the former I went with "scourge." I see Tornelli latterly translated "piaga" as "wound", which I like better, too, but is not really accurate.

Another reason I was happier this week than last (a week ago B.A. declared that I was angry all the time) was that I have once again given up wicked, evil, horrible sugar. I did have little cakes as part of my Afternoon Tea at the spa, but that was it. I am now back on the wagon until St. Nicholas' Day.