The Perfect Escape!

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TIME management, that’s what it’s all about. Until the ‘to do’ pile swamps all reasonable thought processes. It’s at moments like this that Maureen and I ‘go over the cliff’ Thelma and Louise-style, but somehow always manage a soft landing. This month we decided the best place to hide out was Cliveden… by chance on the one day when the sun beat down.

“Really shouldn’t be here, so much to do,” I whimpered to Maureen as we entered the spa, hiding the fact that the latest novel keeping me up round the clock was stuffed in my bag (clearly some kind of prioritising mechanism was still functioning).

But that book wasn’t the only secret I had hidden away. Walking around the beautiful National Trust grounds where the prestigious hotel sits at the top of that famous drive, I had my hands stuffed in jacket pockets. The night before I’d tried – and failed – to ruthlessly remove some bright red nail varnish ready for the moisturising manicure that experts in the spa were planning to deliver. Pillar box red chipped and blobby nails, what a mess. “Oh, they will have seen worse, much worse than that,” declared Maureen, a dedicated spa aficianado.