massage courtesy of Eurostar

A recent trip to Paris reminded me that the best massages are invariably to be had in that city. As my enlightened followers will know The Legologist is a bit picky about massage - well, put it this way, she knows what a good massage is and what wonders it does for your figure and legs. The discovery was made some years ago when a massage therapist was recommended to me by a friend - no one, incidentally, who had anything to do with the beauty industry. And that, as it turned out, proved very relevant because this massage therapist (actually she called herself a body work therapist) followed no discipline that I had experienced before or since. She - and  her technique - were basically unPR-able, and in a perverse way that was what was so brilliant about her: she made up her own rules. Shari originated from California. She was a parody of a campaigning hippie - any sit-in thrown on a Californian campus throughout the Sixties and Seventies featured Shari, sitting cross-legged in her round glasses, plaits and peace beads. In her spare time she worked at an alternative health centre, promoting the benefits of wheatgrass and mung beans - and this was in the days when alternative nutrition (and health) was in its infancy. The smoothie had barely been invented. Anyway Shari learned how to do a decent massage at the health centre and she honed the technique over the years, eventually coming to live in London where she took on a few clients at a time, promising to reshape their bodies. Her work was the closest thing to a miracle in beauty as I've seen (although I hasten to add that it was not achieved without a Herculean lifestyle-altering effort on the part of the client), and it was what made me realise that the right approach really can change a body - and, pertinently, give you better legs than God intended. What Shari did was an extreme form of deep tissue massage - she literally pushed trapped fluids out of your body with her fingers, a process which also galvanised the circulation, and claimed to be able to hear water-clogged fat cells pop as she went. Shari's method was all about getting your circulation moving and forcibly removing trapped fluid which had accumulated over years of sedentariness, salt intake and dehydration. She could get an inch off your muffin top in one session. Anyway, she retired and went to live in Paris in her Sixties, leaving behind a clutch of bereft clients, and the quest to find a therapist who could match Shari's skills - and her knowledge about the workings of the body, diet and exercise - continues years on. Only a few treatments measure up - I can count them on one hand, and the Dior Institute at the Plaza Athenee in Paris, comes close to what I consider a good leg (and body) massage to be. On this trip I had the Leg Reviver, a treatment which starts in the usual way with exfoliation, and progresses through to a good, deep massage which is far removed from the usual (useless) formats you get from a branded treatment, and application of a drainage leg mask which sets on your legs and has to be peeled off. I managed to sneak a tube home (see above) because the products the Dior therapist used aren't (yet) available in the UK. Obviously The Legologist wouldn't recommend a trip to Paris for a massage or leg treatment unless it was exceptional. This one is. Plus, it's Paris! There's food to be eaten, wine and coffee to be drunk and cigarettes to be smoked outside Cafe Flore. Shari didn't discourage any of this - she encouraged you to drink good red wine and if you had to smoke she recommended roll-ups with pure tobacco.  Like I say, she was a one-off - a free spirit who followed her own rules. And London is a poorer place since without her.