Things People Say In The Sauna

This post was supposed to be completely plant-free, but I can’t resist directing you here, because I’ve just planted up a pot of erysimum and they look bloody awful right now, but I SWEAR they hold such undone, ombre promise…absolutely worth a go, together with gaudy primroses and ready-grown muscari (which are just the most perfect instant joy for February, without even getting your hands dirty.)

But sauna chat…

What is it, I wonder, about small, but nevertheless public spaces that makes people feel completely fine to talk about quite private things.

We are in the Alps right now, and I’ve witnessed this happening all day long in the telecabine and on the chair lifts. If you stay silent, you’ll overhear all sorts of things, like how Rachel isn’t actually as good a skier as she makes out, or that Mimi needs picking up from ski school by her dad and he should probably take her back to the chalet. Mimi’s dad would quite like to meet up with ‘the gang’ for a beer but her mother has other plans…it all gets a bit cross and sulky. The row is had in hushed voices, but with the absolute knowledge that everyone can hear.

It’s the same, I find, in a lift (although you rarely get a full cup of juice in such a small space of time…just tantalising droplets) but the very very best place for overhearing stuff is in the sauna. the sauna has three other things going for it when it comes to assisting the cognitive dissonance; firstly, it is dimly lit, and secondly, it is boiling hot and you absolutely cannot bring a phone in there…it would die instantly…this makes the sauna one of those rare places where people have to sit still, sans devices. These two factors, together with the fact that everyone is hardly wearing any clothing create an intimate, yet utterly private feel. Your’e not supposed to notice other people, so you kind of pretend they’re not there at all…and what better way to create the illusion that you really haven’t noticed anybody at all, than to start talking to your friend as if you were both alone?

There is a really marvellous man in the sauna I go to, who is an air traffic controller. He is full of excellent chat. The other day I overheard him talking about his wife’s birthday, and how he had commissioned a local jeweller to make her an eternity ring. He gave everyone there an exact description of the ring, and exactly how he had wrapped it up, and when he had given it to her and how she had reacted and honestly it was one of the loveliest fifteen minutes I’ve ever spent.

Saunas have been very much the in thing for a while now… the heat tricks your body into thinking it’s done a load of exercise, even if you haven’t done any at all, and this effect is amplified if you actually have done some exercise. Many people like to pair it with a freezing cold plunge. I am not at all sure about cold water plunging; I mean, I’m all for shocking the body in order to keep it on its toes, but regularly?

Younger people (I mean people who look to be in their thirties) talk mostly about their workouts or their hair treatments, but sometimes they mention weddings. I adore wedding chat, but sauna wedding chat is next level. There was one time recently when I was treated to a full therapy session in which one lady was agonising about whether it was okay not to invite a particular person to her wedding, even though she had been to his. She wasn’t able to claim that it was ‘small’ or ‘just family and close friends’…agony! Her friend was so brilliant, just listened and gave no advice. People like that, who let you spill your worry pot on the floor and then come to your own decision, are twenty four carat gold in my opinion.

Anyone over forty is usually talking about other people or their teenage children. They also talk about food a lot; I’ve had some excellent recipes from sauna chat. Business men of a certain type are often spectacularly indiscrete about financial things…I think this could only be due to some basic human drive to compete with one-another. Anyone younger than twenty is usually mute, or talking in a whisper (they seem not to have the same level of denial as the rest of us). And yes, I do it too…if I’m ever lucky enough to have a friend with me in the sauna I always talk as if nobody’s listening, even though I know, deep down, that they are.

One of my favourite people in the world and also my neighbour (Kate) is one of the best people to go into the sauna with because she never doesn’t sit down and say quite loudly “Bloody hell it’s BOILING!” and then I say “Kate, it’s a sauna.” And then it’s magical because the spell is broken and everyone laughs and we all have a normal conversation.

Do you do sauna? Do you cold-plunge? Do you eavesdrop?

x Laetitia