My Mumbling Thoughts

Monday I went where many south Londoners rarely go for any reason: north London. I'm not entirely sure why the lines were even drawn in the first place, but you're either south of the river, or north of the river (or east or west, I know, I know). Me? I'm southern, as always. I know the District line and Piccadilly line. That's all. I don't need anything else. I don't use anything else. Everything else is Unknown.

But on Monday I needed to get on the Central line to get to the Northern line so I could go for a Turkish bath. It was far, but worth it.

Many moons ago, my darling Jon, said that we could go for a Turkish bath for my birthday. I'm not sure how the conversation even came up, but it sounded amazing; sitting in one place and sweating through my eyelids? Sign me up! I thought he had long forgotten about it, but last week while I was idly sitting at work, I received a text from him asking if I could take this Monday off so we could sweat up a storm with each other. I happily responded "yes" and that was that. We were going for a Turkish bath!

Now I had never been for a Turkish bath before, but I had a vague idea of what was involved. Jon just told me to bring a bathing suit so I wouldn't have to go in my birthday suit (like the locals).

We decided to make a full day out of it and I met him at our uni gates at eleven o'clock exactly so we could begin our journey. He told me that he wrote the street names down, but not if we had to turn left or right, so it should make for an interesting trip nonetheless. I told him it would feel more spontaneous not knowing which direction we were going in, and didn't feel my normal panic attack that I get whenever I don't know Exactly Where I'm Going At Eevery Single Moment.

Somehow we went straight to the place without getting lost once. We decided that north London was very easy to maneuver around, and that pleased us and made us feel like we had already been there a million times, which was comforting. When we got to the place that held the Turkish baths though, we were told that we were an hour and a half early, since the Turkish baths didn't start until two o'clock. We were fine with that though, and thought it would probably be good if we got some food in our empty stomachs anyway. Traveling from south London all the way to north London had certainly worked up an appetite.

We quickly made a note about how empty this part of north London was though. It looked like we were on a movie set and just felt very...white. It wasn't like we were even London; it felt like we were traveling to go to London, and this was just a random town that we were passing through. A town where ladies wore Donna Karan suits, always had a fresh coat of lip gloss on, and not one hair out of place. The men wore Armani suits, carried brief cases and always had their mobile up to their face chatting away about some meeting or other.

Jon and I felt like tramps in our flip flops and bookbags.

We stopped at a Costa for a snack and a fruit smoothie (that was so good), and afterwards tried to find a patch of green where we could smoke. We looked like such random tourists when we stopped at a map and saw that we were only a five minute walk from what appeared to be the world's smallest park that was full of people lounging during their lunch break.

"I'm worried we're not going to be able to find a space," I told Jon as we walked trying to find a place where we could sit.

"I'm worried we're going to offend someone if we smoke outside."

I laughed. It was very true. Smoking in north London might just ruin the picturesque landscape that they had carefully carved.

We found a bench that was really warm, as if there was an electric heater underneath it, and the second we lit our cigarettes, the lady next to us immediately stood up and left.

"Oops," I said and laughed a little.

By the time we had finished smoking our sinful cigarettes, we made our way back to the place where we were going to sweat every foul toxin out of our bodies. Mondays were the only unisex days, and the two of us separated in our respective changing rooms to get into our bathing suits. I knew that I had walked into a changing room, where people get changed, but I was still surprised to see completely naked bodies in the shower rinsing off from the swimming pool, or after a hard workout in the gym. It caught me off guard and I wasn't expecting to see old women's ladybits on display.

I kept to myself in a bathroom stall, and wrapped up in my towel. I guess my comfort level isn't where the other ladies comfort level is when it comes to the nakedness of my body.

I followed Jon's instructions since I had never experienced a Turkish bath. He said we should sit in the sauna for a while, then hit the plunge pool, sit in the steam room, plunge again and then at the end we should have a full body scrub. I thought it sounded like a good idea and followed him into the sauna, where it wasn't very long before I could feel the sweat beads run down my forehead, back, armpits and other places that I didn't even know could produce sweat. It was strangely liberating sitting there and sweating so profusely and being 100% okay with it. Even though I felt disgusting and rank, I knew with every sweat bead that fell off my body, I was cleansing myself that. much. more.

After we couldn't take the sauna any longer, we rinsed off in the showers and dunked in the plunge pool, which is just a giant tank of ice cold water. Jon and I both learned that you can't just ease youself into it either. You should listen to the word "plunge" and go for it. They don't call it a "plunge pool" for nothing.

So you plunge and when you surface again, you feel so awake, so refreshed and so cold. It's as if your body has just drank a large glass of water and your opened pores are taking in as much of the cold water as possible.

Straight afterwards, we sat in the steam room where we coughed a little whilst our smoker's lungs got used to all of the warm air. I could hardly make out Jon's blurry figure from all of the smoke in the room. It was fun sitting in the steam room as well and feeling all of the water mixed with sweat literally run off of my body. And when we couldn't take anymore of the steam room, we rinsed off in the showers again and plunged once more.

That was all we did for about two hours, rotating ourselves between the sauna and steam room whilst dunking in the plunge pool every so often. It gave us something to do while we waited for our turns on these marble slabs where we were going to lay down and be scrubbed head to toe with these massaging oils and then rinsed off. The woman who scrubbed off all of the dead skin did a damn fine job as well. After I was finished, I wrapped up in my giant white towel and lied down in the resting room where I found it very difficult forming any words. I was so relaxed, so content and had never felt so clean in my entire life.

Jon came in and laid next to me after he was finished, and we could hardly hold a conversation. We were both in the Turkish bath haze and didn't need anything else ever again, so long as we could feel this good forever. Just thinking about leaving north London to go all the way back to our end of the city seemed so difficult, and far too much effort than we were willing to give.

We did eventually leave though, and I drank an entire bottle of water in record time. We were sure that a Turkish bath is generally supposed to only last an hour; we were in there for three glorious hours, which meant we had to come back home with all of the busy worker bees that had just left their office desks. It was fine though, because we just remained in that calm haze the entire time while everyone else buzzed around us.

The entire experience was well worth the long trip to the north, and I discovered that north London is not an Unknown area that one should be worried about. It's a lovely place. Picture perfect almost. I'll just remember to wear my Steve Madden high heels and BCBG outfit for the next Turkish bath.