With massages now unlocked-down in England, may I urge the industry to take this opportunity to clarify something important: should pants be on or off? I have tended to assume the latter, but more than once I have caused some consternation, having apparently made the wrong call. This has been excruciating. Subsequently, I’ve presented myself fully underpanted and been told, almost as excruciatingly, to remove them. Which is it: on or off?

I don’t have regular massages, but neither am I a novice. In my time I have been bashed about by various people around the world, most memorably a terrifying Polish chap in Warsaw, a half-French Ulsterwoman in Manchester and a small but ferocious Thai Australian just south of Brisbane.

My worst experience was at a fancy hotel in Croatia. Looking askance at my swimming shorts, the woman grunted an instruction to drop them as she raised a towel to spare herself the sight of me. Seeking to avoid more confusion, I asked for confirmation that I should lie face down.

“Yes,” said the voice behind the towel. So face down I lay, but as she lowered the towel she beheld me and barked: “Other way!”

Puzzled, I lay on my back. Down came the towel again, before being abruptly raised again.

“No,” she said.

What now?

“Head other end,” she explained. “Face down,” she added, for clarity.

Whatever Croatian is for “I’ve got a right one here”, it is what she was surely saying to herself. And my gravest error was still ahead of us: at that point I should have got off the table and back on to it the right way around and down. Instead, I elected to execute a kind of breakdance manoeuvre, spinning on my back to get my head up the other end. In doing so my feet snagged in the towel she was holding, snapping it out of her hands.

A blur of panicked activity followed. The woman, the towel and I flailed around to get me covered and in the correct position, as a matter of urgency.

The rest of the massage passed without incident.

• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist