Funny what life throws at you. I would never – could never – have imagined, growing up as a (more or less) standard-issue heterosexual male (in the Seventies, moreover, in the north of England), that I would have become at the age of 50, if not yet an expert in, then certainly a veteran of, a wide range of beauty, health, fitness and wellbeing treatments. Or therapies. Or procedures. Or whatever. I’m sure you know the sort of caper I mean.
And yet that is what has come to pass. Toning and tanning. Plucking, prodding and Pilatesising. Candling and (ouch) colonicing. Reflexology, astrology and numerology. Yoga of the hot, kundalini and ashtanga persuasions. Therapies prefixed by the words aroma, psycho, regression and ozone. Analyses of my dreams, palms, past lives and what sort of Native American persona I might have inhabited 300 years ago.
And also massages. Massages ranging from featherweight to sports-weight to deep-tissue weight to unbearably painful weight. And medicines – of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and, for all I know, Taiwanese and Sudanese varieties. And lots of facials, too.
And false fingernails. I’ve had them as well.
Bloody awful they were. I hacked them off with some pliers the moment I got home.
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On the Native American issue, by the way, I decided, as I lay there on another couch in another nice lady’s spare bedroom (and they have pretty much all been ladies, the people I’ve encountered, this one in the London Borough of Haringey if I remember rightly),
I announced, having been invited to speculate, that I reckoned I had in all likelihood been a massive great big warrior chief. Noble. Proud. Wise. Hard as nails, obviously. And doomed, equally obviously.
Also drop-dead gorgeous and totally ripped.
All of these treatments and many more besides, I have, over the years, sampled. Occasionally enjoyed. Occasionally endured. But, at any rate, experienced.
And now, courtesy of Martine de Richeville, the toast of Paris, masseuse to the stars, although she refused to tell me which ones, I’ve added Remodelage massage to my checklist. Having conquered the city of light, De Richeville is now setting up shop in London. Hence her invitation to me. We met at a hotel in central London. I arrived. I listened to the sell. De Richeville was charming. I stripped down to my pants and lay down on a couch. She did her thing. All was absolutely tickety-boo. Very relaxing. Lovely, lovely. And when it was over I got my kecks back on and got on my way.
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No disrespect to De Richeville, but her offer was, I have to say, much the same as many others. Toxins were mentioned. Also stress. Also the vital importance, amid all the hustle and bustle of modern life, of taking some time out for yourself. “You must remember you exist,” counselled De Richeville.
To which I replied: “Damn right.”
She did not tell me that I bottled up a lot of anger, anxiety, angst, aggression and so forth in my neck. Generally, that’s what I’ve been led to believe, over the years. She made no such claim, neck-wise. For which I’m grateful.
She did, on the other hand, via her publicity material, make the bold promise that I would – although perhaps not as the result of just the one session – drop a whole dress size. Within a short period of time. Owing to her ability to unstick otherwise adhesive fat, I believe. Unfortunately, while De Richeville’s methods may help the good ladies of Paris to shrink from a size 6 to a 4, or whatever, my own dress size remains stubbornly the same. Trousers, too.*
I don’t wish to sound sceptical. Truly, I don’t. Not about the practitioners, at any rate. On the contrary, I view people like De Richeville, dispensing their good advice and their good vibes, in much the same uncritically admiring way that I view their equivalents among the nurses and doctors and therapists and auxiliaries in the NHS. De Richeville is the latest in a long line of individuals – almost all of them women – who have aided me over the years. Whatever specialism they happened to swear by was close to irrelevant. The point is, albeit for an hour or less, usually 45 minutes to be frank, they were committed to taking care of me.
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Having met so many people like De Richeville over so many years, my considered view is that most of them can add some and perhaps a lot of value to my life. That value resides, however, in the person not the practice. Unless an advocate of a given treatment is unusually useless, then whatever particular speciality they espouse is probably of some benefit. Not necessarily because of any worth inherent in the treatment, but because of the ability of whoever is administering it.
You ain’t buying the ology or the therapy or the ism; the blinking chakra or whatever it is doesn’t matter a damn. You’re buying the person. You’re buying intimacy. Contact. Attention. TLC. De Richeville supplied all of the above as well as many and better than most. Which, I would argue, is why she is successful. Her skill isn’t in the precise area she chooses to target. Her skill is in being able swiftly to establish a human connection with her clients.
That seems so obvious to me now. I’m embarrassed by how long – four decades or more – that it took me to realise the simple truth that the emotions and psychology that underpin the beauty and therapy industry are anything but trivial, let alone sinister. Of course, vanity and narcissism play their part. But they are as nothing compared to the other entirely benign motivations in play: self-respect; self-improvement; self-knowledge.
The delay surprises me. I have plenty of faults, but I always took pride in being (albeit by the low standards of a middle-aged white heterosexual Englishman) self-aware. Badly dressed, not especially reliable, susceptible to bouts of laziness, not hideous but no oil painting, possessed of so few practical skills as to border on the dangerous – these and many other accusations may well be true. But my saving grace, I believed, was that I was in touch with my emotions. My feminine side.
But I was wrong. Your feminine side isn’t about the ability to rabbit on or gossip. It may well be, however, about an ability to recognise what is and what isn’t important in life. What is deemed important often isn’t, while what is deemed trivial is often bound up with happiness and fulfilment.
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What made me appreciate this fundamental truth was – don’t laugh – the plethora of treatments listed here. Not any particular one – but rather all of them taken together. Apparently daft they may be, these interactions, conversations and vulnerabilities (whatever the speciality, I tend to find myself wearing little more than my underpants, if that) amount to a considerable influence in my life.
I used to kid myself I was low maintenance. Not bothered about looks, or clothes, or hair, or whatever impression people received of me.
That view was wrong. But, at 25, even 35, it was sustainable. At 50, though, you have to confront the reality. You have to assess the choices you’ve made. When you’re 25, the imagined you, the fantasy you, still feels like a possibility. At 50, the way you have actually lived is what matters. That’s what and who you are.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying I’ve turned out to be a bit of a girl.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Over time, I’ve come to see not just the fleeting benefit of all these pamperings, but also their importance. Or rather, I’ve come to see the importance of the people charged with dispensing the primpings and the pamperings.
Starting at the top, I once had my hair done by Nicky Clarke. You don’t hear so much about Nicky Clarke in 2014, but back in the day, he was a major deal. He did Sarah Ferguson’s hair, I think. And that can’t have been easy. Fair play to him, he made my hair look great … for about three hours. After which my blow-dry rather fell to bits. But never mind that, what I learnt from that episode was that Nicky Clarke’s primary talent lay not in his practical skill but in his ability to prompt and empathise and intuit and suggest. In other words, the guy was a good listener. A good hairdresser, also. Clearly. But a better listener. Which made him a better hairdresser.
If I’d been paying Clarke – which I wasn’t, it was a freebie for work – it would have cost upwards of £500. My regular barber used to cost me £8. I’d say Nicky Clarke was better value. You get what you pay more for, even sometimes when what you pay for costs 62 times as much as what you’re used to.
Moving down, and heck, I’ll say it, I pluck my eyebrows. Not in their entirety, you understand. But as and when a rogue hair appears, all black and coarse and unpleasant as such errant growths tend to be when a chap reaches my time of life, out it comes. The bugger doesn’t stand a chance. Neither do its cousins in the ear or nostril regions.
Until a few years ago, my idea of aftershave was to splash some surgical spirit on my chin. Astringent, antiseptic, it did the trick well enough, or so I reasoned. Gradually, my wife turned me on instead to other liquids – liquids able to perform a similar medical function while remaining wholly unredolent of the lavatory or operating theatre. Liquids that were appealing, even. Or so she insisted. Criminally late, but eventually, I finally nailed the maths: the application of actual aftershave, as opposed to disinfectant, equals a vastly increased possibility of sexual intercourse.
It shouldn’t have taken me so long.
And so the story goes on, descending down the rest of the Crampton body. I’ll spare you the boredom, the disgust, of describing the detail. Suffice to say, once upon a time I firmly and passionately believed that appearances, including my own, were not important, nor should they be.
Or at least, that’s what I told myself I believed. The reality was I always loved a nice shirt or suit, I got my ears pierced (yes, both of them) because I thought it looked cool, I always put concealer on my spots, I always knew I looked a great deal better with a decent tan. I got into sunbeds very early doors. I still treat myself every once in a while to a session (nine minutes, hardcore) at Sun City on the Roman Road. When I told myself and others I didn’t care about how I looked I was lying. I reckon anyone who says anything along similar lines is lying, too. I’ve spent a quarter of a century feeling my way back to an honest position on this subject. And every step of my journey has been guided, indicated, quite often ordered, by women. By my wife, obviously, but also by the numerous women working in what are thought of as meaningless jobs but who actually perform the vital task of making the rest of us feel a little bit better about ourselves. I salute them all.
*As it still does, many weeks later. Obviously, my fat cells must be stickier than most people’s
My treatments in numbers
Robert Crampton’s quest for perfection
Alexander Technique: 3
‘Nothing earth-shattering. No walking around, buttocks clenched, big book on your head. A lot of sitting and standing, a lot of lying down.’
Swanky haircuts involving highlights: 3
Rolfing (ultra-painful massage): 1
‘I looked out of the window and tried to leave my body behind, having read in Bravo Two Zero that this is what SAS men do under torture.’
Colonic irrigation: 2
‘Did it work? You know, I believe it did.’
Ozone therapy: 1
‘Truly, I wondered what I was doing there.’
False fingernails: 1
Hopi ear candling: 2
‘Much to my surprise, a perfectly relaxing half-hour, entirely pain-free.’
Dr Hauschka facials: 2
‘I started to pity the miserable spots, imprisoned beneath my skin, straining for their freedom. I believe I might actually have had a mild hallucination sometime around this point.’
Reflexology: lots
‘I laid on her couch and she asked me to think of a place where I could feel calm. I felt the ground beneath the couch start to wobble a little.’
Acupuncture: loads
‘She said she would insert six needles. Deep breath in, prick, barely felt a thing. Ten minutes of that, and it was over.’
Shiatsu: 1
Super-bikini wax: 1
‘It left me wanting more so she did my legs, eyebrows and, just for the hell of it, armpits.’
Tai chi: a lot
Pedicure: as often as possible
‘Pain, proper pain. This was a test of manhood for the ages: nerve endings fanning out like tentacles across the centuries, snaking over the rocks of Thermopylae, the mud of Passchendaele, the grit and gravel of Helmand.’
Dream analysis: 2
Pedicures with fish eating feet: 1
‘Once and that’ll do, frankly.’
Yoga and Pilates: dozens
‘I wanted to be all relaxed and Eastern, but I actually looked like a man locked in a losing battle with a ghastly bowel movement. Tiring – and ridiculous also.’
Metamorphics: 1
‘As usual, it was about discovering the real you. As usual, you had no idea whether it worked or not.’
Nutrition consultations: many
Diets: many more
‘Then my son’s birthday came along and with it crisps, cocktail sausages and cheese straws. All was lost. After a week I was back where I started.’
Eyebrow threading: ½
‘Half a session – I bottled it in short order.’