
Image: Thinkstock
It is probably true that money cannot buy love. But we should not also conclude that money is unable to buy love’s cure. Which is to say, five star ultra-luxe spa lodgings and a good body treatment is the fastest road to recovery after a break-up that I know.
I have sustained two major emotional injuries in my adult life and a number of minor dumpings and by the time I got to the second or third “I’m leaving you because you need to learn how to love, Helen” (if you ever hear this, a fairly reliable translation is: “I have met someone who showed me her tits on webcam”) I got jack from talking to mental health professionals. I mean. You leave their suites blotchy and $200 poorer just to hear “it’s not your fault”. It struck me that my beauty therapist would tell me the same thing for about fifty bucks less AND apply a hydrating mask.
By the time I got to the third or fourth “I just need some time to work on me” (if you ever hear this, a fairly reliable translation is: “I fear I cannot keep my naked webcam chats a secret for much longer so one of us has to move out”) I had upgraded from simple beauty therapy to a full-blown spa retreat. Two years ago when I was left for a webcam, I checked into the Lake House in Daylesford an emotional corn husk and left a fully moisturised peach.
How to trust someone again after a breakup
Frankly, if there’s a hard financial choice to make between improved skin tone and a bunch of tedious “mindfulness” exercises, I’m spending my wages in the place that serves cucumber water every time. If it were not for glycolic acid, Diptyque candles by the hot tub and a menu of dainties than included what I have now identified as the western world’s most heartbreak-appropriate dessert (white chocolate jelly with violets), I don’t think I would have rebuilt myself at all after the last tsunami of tears.
Oh, alright. I probably would have but it might have taken much longer and been a lot less fun and I wouldn’t have been able to make a convincing case for a return trip to the heartbreak hotel when I learned that my friend had been ditched by a total idiot.
My old pal Clem Bastow is a sterling girl of whom, save for her appalling taste in suitors, I approve entirely. And so it was when her latest Man-Baby dumped her at the DFO (AT THE DFO. I wish he had done it at Miu Miu or something. Getting the sack next to remainder bins and racks of parallel imports just seems especially humiliating) I said, “Right. Wax your bush and pack your elasticised pants because you’re eating and exfoliating your way out of this one.”
Daylesford is a striking postcard of a village an hour out of Melbourne and it is full of spotless style and produce. Its ragtag rhododendron gardens and impeccably rustic main street were probably conceived by homosexual set designers raised on a strict diet of Audrey Hepburn and understated tastes.
Its natural spas are probably the result of geological forces, but who cares about minerals and shit right now, because here we are in a town full of nineteenth century bathhouses and uncommonly good country coffee. We’re gonna beat a retreat from emotional defeat, Clem. Appropriately, we were to do this in the Lake House’s premium villa known as The Retreat.