‘What is a Turkish bath exactly?’ Mid-September, and American Cathy and I were in a taxi on the last afternoon of a four-day holiday to Turkey. She’d asked me along in an effort to cheer herself up on what would have been her 31st wedding anniversary. I accepted gladly. We’d spent a night in Istanbul and this was our third and final day in Goreme, Cappadocia. Cathy organised the programme; Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the underground Cisterns, a rooftop dinner, a balloon ride over the local fairy chimneys, valleys and cave dwellings, visits to museums and ancient sites, and now we were on our way to a Turkish bath.

‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘I only know it involves heat, maybe steam. Not wanting to get semi-naked with strangers, I booked us a private one.’ As we approached, we noticed that the building housing the baths had, like most of the trendy bars in the village, fallen victim to ‘toddlercore’; a phenomenon influenced by an east Asian aesthetic, which involves the proliferation of huge stuffed toys and cartoon-embellished clothing. Gen Z is in its thrall. Several giant toy pandas and tigers were pinned to the walls of the entranceway.

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