I’ve heard it all before, “you really don’t drink enough water”.

A friend gave me a voucher for a spa for my birthday and I spent a glorious afternoon being wrapped in seaweed, being polished, being buffed, being massaged and finally lay back all cosy beneath a snuggly blanket to enjoy an hour of reflexology, which, if I’m honest, is my very favourite way of spending time. Yes, it’s true. Let’s just say I will never feign a headache when someone offers to rub my feet.

Anyway, I settled back on the heated lounger thingy, closed my eyes and proferred by freshly manicured feet to the friendly balinese therapist. She ran her hands over them and then up my calf and emitted a “tut tut”. Had I not showered off a piece of dead sea mud or was I a bit remiss about exfoliating? Was I heck? “Oh dear, you really don’t drink enough water”, says she. I craned my neck forwards and levelled my best offended expression in her direction and she levelled one of those superior “I know what I’m talking about” expressions back and repeated the accusation but this time added “look, you can see it in your legs. You are retaining water. They are puffy. Your skin is so dry”. Humph!

Well, I don’t really pay very much attention to the things therapists say because invariably they are followed with “we have an excellent cream/soap/moisturiser/rehydrating gel/capsules of frangipani oil with tahitian lotus extract that will have your skin looking 10 years younger if you apply it twice daily. It’s a bit pricey at €300 but you only need to apply a tiny amount and it’ll last you for a year”. So, I simply allowed her her moment of superiority and sank back into the folded towel in the dramatic manner of someone sinking into a plump, hand-harvested, hungarian goose down pillow.

The reflexology was exceptionally good. I woke myself with my gentle snores twice.

I went home to my waterless world.

I used to suffer from quite bad cystitis/kidney infections which, if any of you has had them, are excruciating, debilitating and you would do virtually anything that would be guaranteed to prevent them. Drinking lots and lots of water helps, a lot. Ahem.

And still I went on my merry way. It’s not that I don’t like water. I just can’t be bothered. It bores me. And I’m very easily bored. I need things to stimulate me. I’m a bit of an adrenalin junkie. Water just doesn’t do it for me. If it’s there, poured for me, with a delicious meal, of course I’ll sip it. I’ll even take it with a headache tablet but only enough to lubricate my throat to get the tablet down.

But mainly it’s because I don’t like my life to be ruled by having to go to the toilet every few minutes. I am told that if you drink your recommended quota of water each day, your body adjusts in time and you don’t need to cross your legs or do a little jig in order to get the key into your door lock in case you can’t make it to the loo. Frankly, I’ve never given water the benefit of the doubt so I really couldn’t tell you whether this is true or not.

But that was before yesterday.

I deposited my two eldest girls and two friends at the cinema and, with a few hours to kill, I decided to browse around a large shopping mall.

At this point it’s fair to add that my recent crossover into my 5th decade (ok, it’s going to remain recent for quite some time) has prompted me to regard myself very critically in the mirror each day and I swear that these fine (oh yes they are!!!!) lines around my eyes are starting to resemble the Nile delta in my very paranoid mind.

Anyway, as I travelled up the escalator to the ladies clothes department, I saw him, his eagle-eye scouring the floor for prey, ready to swoop in for the kill. I had about 5 seconds to prepare my strategy. I understand PR/marketing. I know that you can’t even let them make eye contact or you’re finished. He was a tall version of Charlotte’s gay friend, Anthony Marentino, in Sex and the City. I don’t know why I didn’t just obey my own rules and fix my gaze on some imaginery item of clothing and head ruthlessly for it. Maybe subconsciously I decided that I needed a challenge or wanted to pick a fight.

So, I glanced towards him as I skipped of the escalator. “Madam, allow me to change your life”. Oh crikey. I gave him a look that bore not just a small resemblance to the look that that balinese therapist had given me a few months ago and then I cocked my head to one side and raised my right eyebrow as high as it could possibly go and said “go on then”. Half an hour later my nails were shining, my hands were as silky as, well, silk and, as my daughter called me to say they were out of the cinema, I was being led to a stool to make myself more comfortable. “I’ll be there in two minutes”, I whispered into the phone as the half Israeli/half French ex-footballer, who had to give it up because of an achilles problem (oh yes, we were well past skin pleasantries at this stage), ran his fingers over my fine lines and shook his head in disbelief. “What?”, I snapped, pressing the red key on my phone. “We don’t drink enough water, do we?”, he said in the kind of voice that even I wouldn’t get away with using on my 3 year old.

Well, the nail buffer wasn’t too expensive, the cuticle oil is rather nice, my husband remarked on the lovely smell when I came home so the lavendar hand and body cream was definitely worth the special offer price of €35 Euro and the eye cream and serum do seem to have natural face-lifting properties. The problem is I won’t really know whether any of them really work because the free water may well be the reason why I’m going to have glowing skin, silky hair, baby soft hands and sparkling eyes. I’ll just never know.

I’m sure that my body will adjust in time and I won’t always have to get up twice during the night, seek out the ladies as soon as I enter a shopping centre, gauge it so that I go to the toilet just before getting into the car to make a journey that takes 15 minutes. And make sure that I know there’s somewhere to stop on the way if the journey is any longer than that.

And if my middle daughter makes one more remark about dripping taps and fountains and the like when I am hobbling on the front door step frantically digging around in my bag for my keys, I will, er,  not be responsible for my actions though I may be very embarrassed.