Liminality: Stepping into a New Year

I spent this festive liminal period, that is, the days betwixt Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, quite fancily this year. A friend who had received a spa day for two as a birthday gift in January had revealed that she wanted to take me with her just after her birthday. Excited, I suggested we go in the February half term. When that came and went, I would every so often bring it up and offer to email the spa to arrange it myself, to alleviate the stress organising produces within her.

When half the year had come by, and with my efforts rebuffed, I decided I would no longer bring it up, through fear of pestering. During a pause of conversation in October, I mentioned in passing, “you only get about a years’ use out of those” to which she was reminded just how much of the year had already passed. The year seemed to be moving at an accelerated pace to the ones that proceeded it, as if someone upstairs had accidentally pressed the 1.5x button on the rate of temporality. By the beginning of December, she texted that the date was set, the treatments were booked, and that we’d be on our way to relish and luxuriate come December 28^th.

As a luxury reserved strictly for birthdays (though I suppose it still was this time, just a heavily delayed one), it felt rather indulgent to be packing my bag for a day of poolside chatter and pampering. Instead, I should be spending this time sat in my living room, nursing a coupe glass of Bailey’s alongside a plate of various roasted vegetables lathered in gravy. Once I reckoned with this, I came to the conclusion that a trip to the spa is indeed just the thing to do to release the old year and usher in the new one.

I power walked to Brockley station as a result of neglecting to check my route before leaving the house (festive travel). My supposedly seamless journey was now convoluted with unnecessary steps. On the way, I sent my friend a voice note in all whisper that, due to the absence of a bra, a completely alien sensation for me outside of the home, I felt like a pornstar hurriedly enroute to a shoot.

The swimsuit itself, which I had swapped out for a bra for time-saving convenience, was nearly a decade old with an already unsupportive combination of being both backless and a self-tied halter neck. This coupled with elastic that had seen better days meant that, whilst it still fit and looked lovely, it provided a loosey goosey feeling concerning the region of the bust that prompted feelings of embodying a budding (and tardy) starlet. She replied enthusiastically “Yes! Let them be free!”

We made our way to Shoreditch, big shoulder bags resting on our legs, the sleeves of our sizable winter coats spilling out onto the other’s arm rest. “God, I hope it’s heated in there”, I remarked, recognising the ill fate that waited for us of being both wet and cold. We chatted throughout our journey, catching the other up on the happenings of our Christmastime, shocked by how much had occurred in such a brief amount of time, particularly since it had been just shy of a week since we saw each other last.

Feeling resplendently dehydrated from a session in the sauna and stifled by a stint in the steam room, we dipped back into the pool and requested our glasses of prosecco. Sipping from the cold flutes, our arms rested on the edge of the pool, body’s stretched out and legs kicking to keep us afloat. The effects of said prosecco were felt in rapid time, something we both acknowledged within a handful of sips. The feelings of tipsiness were compounded by prior unduly heat.

We swam gently and sat in the jacuzzi, feeling rather bourgeois. As a result of this, we vowed to make it a more regular occurrence when the budget allows. Every few minutes or so, I would anxiously check to ensure that my swimsuit hadn’t moved immodestly out of place from the ferocious bubbling. I was never going backless again.

When it was time to be ushered to the treatment rooms for our massages (full body followed by a facial, heaven), I shared that when I had first come to a spa with my Mum for my 23^rd birthday, she was taken aback by the fact we had male masseuses. “Wait… they’re men?” my friend remarked. I was shocked at her reaction, “well, yeah, I mean only once have we got a female masseuse, but every time I’ve had a man”. She looked at me, stupefied. “They’re professionals!” I countered, then recalling a visit from my 24^th birthday in which the masseuse poured cold oil in small drips down the length of my spine before massaging it in. “That’s quite sexual” she replied, leaving a pause. We both began to laugh.     

   Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at The National Portrait Gallery, Jan 2026

Inside the room, in which calming, high frequency music poured from speakers, we disrobed, per the instructions of our masseuses before their departure. “I’ll take the man, since it’s my birthday!” she insisted, swiftly changing her stance in matters of opposite-sex massaging. Perhaps it was my earlier advocacy for a man’s grip. I went to the appropriate side.

After our near hour of treatment, in which my calves and hamstrings had never felt so liberated and unrestricted (my works calls for a lot of uphill walking), and my jaw fully relieved of its tension, it was time to get up and get out. “Did you fall asleep?” she asked, fastening the clinically white towel around her upper body, “no, but I could’ve” I replied. “Oh, I thought I heard heavy breathing” to which we both buckled over with laughter. We were in some kind of sweet, serenity-induced delirium.

With our faces stripped bare and aglow, our hair messily frizzed from a cocktail of chlorine, heat, and an oily scalp massage, we scoured the room for our flip flops. The masseuses came back and politely hurried us out, aware of a schedule they were meant to keep. “Why does it feel like we’re doing the walk of shame right now?” my friend jokingly mumbled as we sauntered to the changing room across the spa reception. Full-body euphoric calm combined with a state of dishevelled undress most likely mimicked that feeling.

Refreshed, but starved, we wandered around the streets of Shoreditch, Hoxton, and then finally, Liverpool Street to find food that was appetising without being ridiculously priced. Settling for Boxhall, we spoke of New Years Eve plans, or lack thereof, over chicken gyoza and potato tots covered in a sheet of grated parmesan and doused in garlic aioli. We reflected partly on the year for each of us, mostly though, just how fast it seemed to have went by. A recurring sentiment shared amongst us as months of the year unfolded before us in rapid succession.

When I think back on the last year, I think of it as a year of transformation. Not only for myself, but for those I hold closest to me, and the ways in which these transitions shifted and reshaped our relationships. Most of my friends and I alike hit our quarter life crisis—turning 25. Weddings were announced, relationships broke down, new ones formed fast, people moved, families got bigger.

I left a job I felt trapped in for far too long and as a result felt recharged, liberated, wholly exuberant. As time passed, those feelings began to dissipate, and instead I felt defeated and unreasonable in my career goals, struggling to get work for months after. After awaiting a call back from a particularly well-paying job in which the interview had gone greatly the week before, I cried when finding the automated rejection email from them in my junk folder later afternoon. Typical in the education sector, but it felt like the final straw after months of setbacks.

This newfound abundance of time however meant that I could spend it on my favourite hobby, being with my friends. On the flip side, I was also the most financially fraught I’d been in years for the last quarter of this year. I hadn’t felt fiscal strain like it since I was at university waiting for my bursary to hit, my rent having already swallowed up all of my student loan. This time however, there was no termly bursary, I was on my own.

2025 for me was a year of reconfiguring, of working out what it was I wanted, and taking action against that which no longer aligned. It felt like a shedding of sorts, on theme given it was the Year of the Snake. Persisting in places of unhappiness would no longer do. Now that I had learnt this, it became an attitude I continue to hold with me.

Since 2022, I’ve made virtual visions board at the start of the year to set as my laptop lock screen. This year, perfectionist that I am, I stayed up till 2am to finish it. The process also serves as a sort of ‘Pinterest: Year in Review’ which is always fun!

There is a tendency to let the bad eclipse what was otherwise a great year, and I don’t want to commit this terrible sin. There was so much beauty in this year too, in deepened friendships, in nights that lasted forever, in glory filled days sprawled out in the sun, eyes teary from laughter, with achy abdominals to match.

Through the privilege of movement, I discovered a newfound reverence for my body and the strength it harbours. I also made time for things that brought me joy, consistently. I read lots, and brilliant stuff to. I revelled in wonder where I could and felt inundated with creative inspiration, resulting in a sense of solidified strength in my own capabilities. The prevailing emotional undercurrent that thrummed throughout the year seemed to be hope. Hope that things will work out, that things come to fruition, hope for all that is yet to come.

*

As of late, I worry that I didn’t smell enough pine this festive season before they’re all hidden away for another year again. As I write this, two weeks into the New Year, green tinsel still adorns my bedroom mirror, and a large, white, glittering snowflake hangs from the top of my bookcase. I have not set a date to take these lingering decorations down, nor am I in any hurry. What can I say, I am a sucker for festivities, and immensely sentimental. See you at Candlemas!

In a pine-induced flow state, unaware of my friend’s camera

In accordance with tradition (well, I did it last year), here are my top 3 media favourites of the 2025:

Ins for the year: love, 60s cinema, more Nancy Wilson, dancing, discernment, bearing the fruits of your labour, whimsy

Out: Making do, populism, Depop prices on Vinted, non-weatherproof umbrellas

Thank you for being here for another year! Here’s to the New Year, and the Year of the Horse ❤

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at The National Portrait Gallery. Jan 2026

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