Essaouira: A Satirical Sojourn in Self-Improvement

Day One: Stansted to Spiritual Laxatives

Saturday, 20 September 2025, and we embarked on our great odyssey — though "great" might be overselling the act of squeezing into an Uber, scooping up two sisters along the way (in the Uber sense, not the gospel one), and trudging through Stansted. A quick hot chocolate was consumed — because nothing screams international jet-setter quite like cocoa powder in a paper cup.

Priority boarding placed us in pole position for the race to discomfort. The Ryanair flight itself was a carnival of decibels, like karaoke night for jet engines. Upon landing, turbulence had me reaching for scripture. The queue at immigration? A masterclass in slow-motion suffering, made all the more profound by my musings on civil service hierarchies. A true holiday mindset.

At the hotel, salvation was found in a single bottle of chilli sauce, which I used to resurrect otherwise bland meals. I waxed lyrical about “cleansing the colon” (metaphorically, thank you very much) and finding “acceptance” as my card of choice in the day’s reflection exercise. Acceptance that perhaps my haircut wasn’t the centre of the universe, and that even as chairman, son, husband, civil servant — hope alone won’t cut it. Action is needed. Which, frankly, is terribly inconvenient.

The day ended with a massage, which made me question if enlightenment was supposed to feel like being assaulted by very polite elbows.

Fast forward to the Day Three:

I rose at 4:30, not because of discipline but because my legs refuse to sleep past dawn. Yoga was a two-hour exercise in realising just how inflexible my hamstrings are. Breakfast? Eggs done two ways. Naturally, I had both — why choose between virtues when you can hoard them?

Swimming 45 lengths was my moment of triumph, only slightly undermined by the fact that no one else was around to witness it. Partner yoga was next. My wife was cruelly assigned elsewhere, so Abbas stepped in. Between squats and sit-ups, we managed to win both group games. Victory, though sweet, was suspiciously hollow — mostly because we were one teammate short and thus granted an advantage.

The hammam was a lesson in humility. Doused, scrubbed, and exfoliated with the efficiency one usually reserves for livestock, I watched years of dead skin accumulate on the tiles. A reminder that perhaps I’m not as polished as I thought. The rosewater finale was lovely, though, and I managed to utter “non” when offered sugar in tea, which made me feel both continental and superior.

Day Four: Couple Yoga & Cats of the Medina

At 6:15, a bell summoned us, though I’d already been awake since 4:30. Yoga again, but this time interspersed with emotion. Staring into my wife’s eyes after 33 years of shared chaos was unexpectedly moving. It turns out the most difficult posture isn’t downward dog but vulnerability.

Lunch was peppers and soup; the afternoon, a guided tour through Essaouira’s history. Rashid spoke of ships, cannons, dyes, and fortifications while Norfolk pines looked on in weary approval. The Medina sang — literally, thanks to six young Moroccans who serenaded us into a sense of communal joy.

Then came shopping. The women descended on the souks like tactical units, while I became engrossed by the cats. Once brought to combat rats, now ear-clipped and spayed, they lazed in nonchalant dignity. The toms, predictably, dodged control. A small parable of male privilege, played out in fur.

That evening, joy erupted again. Music, dancing, “Yeh Dosti” sung with abandon — the kind of scene that feels profound at the time, yet would sound unbearably sentimental over dinner with sceptical friends back home.

And so, as my days in Essaouira blur into a mosaic of yoga mats, hammam tiles, chilli sauce, and cats, a thought lingers: all this cleansing, stretching, sweating, reflecting — is it a genuine pivot towards transformation, or simply a well-curated holiday performance?

Which brings me to you, dear reader:

Are you content to remain comfortably sedentary, wrapped in routine like a cat on a Medina wall — or are you willing to stretch, scrub, and season your life into something that might, just might, change for the better?