A beginner’s guide to getting a massage

 The agony could strike at any moment. Daggering pains in my lower back demanded correction. Not just painkillers, I needed a permanent cure. ‘Thai massage’ suggested the internet, so I hobbled across a tangle of east London streets and found a doorway beneath a pink neon sign. A receptionist of south Asian appearance, bundled in a white winter coat, nodded at me unsmilingly. ‘Massage?’ I asked. ‘Forty,’ she said tersely. I counted eight fivers out into her small pink hand. ‘A receipt?’ ‘No receipt,’ she said. ‘Room Two.’

She gestured behind her at a line of numbered doors. Room Two was a narrow, sweet-smelling nook with silvery wallpaper, piped Burmese music and a tiny shower cubicle. Centre-stage was a treatment couch spread with a roll of grey tissue about the length of an adult male corpse. The door swung open and there stood the receptionist, now dressed in a matronly black nurse’s outfit that clung to her petite buxom figure.