I’m starting to work out where all the saunas are in Brighton.
Lou found this one. Her old friend Bella has made it happen. It’s a little custom made sauna box, about the same size as the little cabin I was in over New Year. Lou had it booked ages ago for us. It’s in Stanmer Park.
We go there pretty often, to Stanmer. There’s good walking, ancient cedars, and some decent shroom activity there. Even today, in the off-season, we found some excellent ones. Velvet Shanks, which peak in January, usually on dead beech. A flourish of them. Enoki. There was enough there and in good enough condition for an excellent soup. But it is my first positive and I’m only allowed to eat them when I’ve had three clear positives backed up by second opinions. So I left them. We had plans for dinner anyway.
We wandered up to the field next to the old willow shelter. That’s where Bella has pitched her sauna. Clothes off in a little hut, paddle over between planting beds, and in you go. There were nine of us in that box. All of us as pale as we ever get, lined up in a hot box.
Two hours long. I didn’t think I would last, but Bella was coming in with essential oils to put in the steam, and wands of different plants to bash each other with. We were sucking on oranges and having cold water thrown on us with oak fronds, and gently birching each other and ourselves as well like penitent medieval monks. I was the only man in there, and about half a shade darker. None of us have seen the sun for too long.
When we overheated we went and sat in the long grass of a freezing soaking meadow in our pants in January and looked at the horses. Then back in for another blitz and it wasn’t long before we found out the time had gone by.
I’m so chilled out now. Time with Lou has that effect. I’ll be in bed hours before usual, and I’ll sleep long and deep with the sea for company. Sure Tessy will jump on me and put her arse in my face at about 3am. But that’s to be expected. And how can you fault this face?
AlBarclay 