A Love Letter to Bathing in the Dark

We live in overstimulated times, walking blindly through life staring at screens and using every moment of downtime to catch up on unending content. Even when we're not chasing endorphins down Instagram rabbit holes, we're endlessly distracted - news feeds, a barrage of emails, and, for relaxation, an overwhelming amount of streamed entertainment. We wake up to Twitter and scroll ourselves to sleep with scarcely a moment to switch off in between.

Once, when I remarked on how strange I thought it that city fishermen spend hours catching fish only to fling them back into the water, a friend posited that pond fishing is modern society's answer to daydreaming. Nursing a ten a.m. beer while lobbing terrorised fish back into the canal is an acceptable use of time, sitting on a park bench staring into space is not. Smoking, for all its ills, at least gave people a reason to stand outside staring into space for five minutes. Dog walks or lonely swims offer a similar respite, but sometimes, particularly in the depths of January, a less bracing solution is needed.

So, on a world worn weary day, when work is done, I fill my bath with scalding water, turn off the lights, and slide into peaceful oblivion.

To call it sensory deprivation would be an overstatement - London's night is never dark, and the traffic outside never stops. Still, the information overload pauses, and, in those moments of dusky calm, I feel myself slip into a different consciousness, one in which my thoughts, uninterrupted, find a clarity quite lacking in the day. The heat helps - a searing sensation so all-consuming that worries vanish under the swirling currents of pleasure and pain. Scented oils can transform the experience into something luxurious, too. Irrespective of their individual claims, aromatherapy oils all relax me, turning me into a softer skinned, less harried version of my pre-bath self.

There may be archly intelligent Twitter threads to catch up on, memes to knowingly repost and much to stream, but tonight, when January's pale grey sky turns to charcoal, treat yourself to twenty minutes of dark, hot nothingness instead.

*Leg shaving in the dark not recommended.