Someone Touched My Wobbly Bits

Before the heartfelt sympathy starts pouring in, no, I have not been physically assaulted. I know I've had a few run ins with the police force recently, but this is a nice thing.

I want to talk about a spa treatment, bought for me by my generous older (though questionably not wiser) sister Lucy. She treated to a magical full body massage (The Comforter? Treatment) at LUSH Spa Kingston. I use the adjective magical quite literally, as there were bubbles in the little, darkened room and music from Willy Wonka playing. It felt like I was in a mini, pleasantly scented spaceship.

First of all I must credit LUSH as a company on how the entire day was delivered. I am not a self conscious person, but I did have my realistic reserves about how the treatment would take place. How naked is full body? Will I cope with someone seeing my wobbly bits? Shit, I need to shave my legs/wear suitable underwear...ETC. Don't laugh. We all have our moments. OH HOW WRONG I WAS.

On arrival we were sat down and we had a cute chat with our therapists. We were offered a drink & shown to our massage rooms. The spa area itself was like someone's living room who has incredible talent with home design; beautiful colours, smells and ambience. We were told exactly what would happen and what products would be used where. When we'd stripped down to the bare minimum and had snuggled into a heated duvet spa bed, we rang a little bell so the therapist would know to begin. Through this whole process, Aquarium by Arthur Fiedler was playing which made my mind feel gooey. If you aren't familiar with this piece of music, educate yourself...you won't be disappointed.

The treatment itself was a hot chocolate exfoliating body scrub and a rose scented medium pressure massage of the arms, legs, chest and back. It was bewitching. When she hit my lower back...good god. My skin still feels soft and healthy and the whole day made for a fantastic memory.

Word of the day: SATISFIED. I would recommend the LUSH Spa to any human being I know. It is no gimmick; just blissful. I am over analytical and anxious by default, so trust me.

My treatment is priced at £75. If you're looking to REALLY treat a best friend or family member to a day of infinite indulgence, I would whole heartedly get on this website and splash zee cash; https://www.lush.co.uk/products/treatments-0

Thank you for listening to my selfish post! :) and I know there's not many pictures on my blog to accompany the words, but we're all adults and to be honest you should know how to enjoy a wonderful chunk of writing by now.

Mind Over Body

I have felt in relative harmony with myself the last few days. I've rode the waves of my mind and as I’m typing this, have received the good news that my new job will be permanent as opposed to fixed term temporary. This means I won’t just be tossed onto the open road after a short ride like a creepy hitchhiker *does celebratory wiggle*. As a result of a busy albeit, chilled few days, I haven’t bothered too much with making myself look like anything other than ordinary. I always make sure I look sort of presentable because it makes me feel neat and in case I happen to bump into Channing Tatum (the internet tells me he lives in London so it could happen, don’t ruin this for me please). Since reaching my twenties, I very rarely entertain negative, hateful feelings towards myself and my appearance, nor spend a great deal of time dwelling on it. I think, as we grow, most of us learn how little importance it has. I have met a lot of people and none of them have heaved upon sight of me so hopefully I don’t look like the evil queen in Snow White upon her transformation to an old beggar woman.

Of course my comfortable attitude towards my appearance isn't bulletproof.  Put into an example, I do wear some very basic make-up to the gym (ridiculous I know), but I have also worn the same, ugly tracksuit bottoms and jumper to work out in for the past two years and I like to think that the two cancel each other out. Likewise, I am guilty of holding the occasional pity party. I usually give myself the pleasure of unwrapping feeling fat or thinking I’m ugly, thoughts of which when I do have, I know to dismiss because they aren't important or true. In my mind I can see hundreds of human heads, male and female, nodding in agreement from an imaginary audience that are reading this and have felt those things too. As I hear this negativity from many people, very regularly, this post is a reminder that being self-depreciating and hating how you look is pointless and unproductive. The excessive importance that is placed on appearance brings nothing but artificial, temporary happiness. You are born into your body and you’re always going to exist in it (claustrophobic thought). If the way you look is something that violates your mind more than you’d like it to then I’d entertain this thought. Based on their physical beauty, the most attractive flowers may be the ones that are picked first and displayed in a glass vase in the middle of a room. They are also the ones that get a week to exist until they wilt, die and rot.

Focusing too much on the way you look is like slowly sawing off your arm (can’t recommend). It’s painful and self-destructive. A cool thought came to me today, and as this blog claims to be a place for cool things, I felt it somewhat appropriate to share. I found myself thinking about how being the owner of a strong mind is invaluable compared to anything else. If you explore your mind and challenge it you’ll find out that it’s a large, expandable sponge that can bring you ridiculous, long term happiness. It let's you wear your kindness, your imagination and your confidence. If you use your mind as your most attractive feature then any insults you give yourself and that others give you about how you look won't have effect because you’ll reach a point where your mind will be like Thor’s hammer. Very powerful and controllable by no-one except you. If you love yourself and your appearance then let’s share a high five, but if you’re in that uncomfortable zone of not quite knowing then remember, mind over matter. I will leave you with a little treat from Tyrion Lannister of Game Of Thrones, who, through being that someone who is constantly ridiculed for how he looks, really knows his shit.

Testing On Animals

When my mother was younger, she spent time out of her life contacting major cosmetic companies asking them a very short, very simple question. Do you test on animals? Back in the 80s legislation protecting animals from cruelty wasn’t as advanced and successful as it is today. My mum has always loved animals and been horrified at the idea of mindless animal cruelty; today she was telling me about a conference she’d been too in her 20s in a well off area in London, where Joanna Lumley was appealing against the culling of seals in Canada. Little did I know, she also wrote many letters to many people appealing for animal cruelty to be stopped and today we managed to find them. Reading through page after page of responses to her letters makes me a very proud daughter (my mum is awesome). 

As you can probably guess, from the existence of this blog post, both of us share the same ideals. This is not meant to be a judgement of those who do use products that may be tested on animals, or to those who aren’t aware or don’t care about it, or an effort to make myself seem like a perfect, angel child, it’s merely my insight into something that I think is of great importance.

As you probably are aware, animal cruelty stretches very far into many dark corners of the world and the immorality happens in an endless list of ways; if you watch the news you’ll have seen the continued effort to protect against poachers mindlessly killing elephants for the illegal trade of ivory and how the unnecessary use of palm oil is causing rain forest habitat loss and orang-utan genocide. Today I saw a man yanking at a dog that had a thick metal chain round his neck, he was shouting obscenities at it and to me, that’s cruelty.  Whether it’s a critically endangered orang-utan or a laboratory rat, it’s still cruelty. I think animal testing for cosmetics is an appalling practice of absolutely mindless cruelty.

Europe has banned animal testing for cosmetics which is fantastic, but it doesn’t make it impossible for companies to test on animals outside of Europe. The thing that irritates me the most about animal testing is that it isn’t a legal requirement for companies to put ‘This is made by a company that tests on animals’ on the front of their products. It is a problem of supply and demand and if everyone opened their minds to the ethics of the companies their lipsticks or shower gels come from, maybe they’d think twice about buying them. It sounds extreme but it happened with the sales of cigarettes, you don’t see a packet without a dramatic, health warning of a blackened lung splayed over the front. Or that colour wheel of calories and fat in our food; another effort to solve a problem.

When I go shopping, which is relatively often (I have needs), I love to find products that I know are made in the RIGHT way; that don’t require caged rats or injections into rabbits. There are so many companies that ARE cruelty free. I urge you to give it a go. Next time you go to buy something, check the back and see if it’s cruelty free (you’ll most likely see a bunny logo). You can't deny, animals are awesome and so is protecting them, so let's all be beautiful AND kind. Live long and prosper. 

 LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics and Bomb Cosmetics both make adorable, animal friendly products. As you can see from this small segment of my very large collection - I LOVE their bath bombs.