I don't like the summer much. The sun serves only to make me pink through sun burn or eczema and, being the self-absorbed person that I am, the sight of pretty young things gallavanting about in next to nothing leaves me beset with a pathetic self-loathing. The other day at work a tanned and long-legged, scantily clad goddess walked into the foyer, causing an awed silence to fall across every male present. I bitterly muttered something to Female Colleague about forgetting to put any clothes on that morning, or something equally hackneyed, whilst inside wishing desperately that I had slim, toned thighs of polished mahogany rather than hideous limbs with the appearance of a poorly-set blancmange. It's at times like these that I start to have dangerous thoughts. Thoughts about exercise. Thoughts that need quashing immediately. I don't do exercise and it's for very good reasons.
GPs have often suggested to me that a bit of "gentle exercise" will help with depression. I've always dismissed it as a completely ludicrous idea. To me, there's no such thing as "gentle exercise". Being fat and rubbish at sport taught me that physical exercise is nothing but brutal torment. Games at school was ritual humiliation for me and as soon as I had the werewithall I bunked off, hiding smoking in the junior school changing rooms, like every other sensible person.
However, I did entertain the idea while at university that perhaps not all physical exercise had to be quite as traumatic as what I'd experienced at school. Surely in the Real World there weren't games teachers who hit you on the arse with a hockey stick if you didn't run fast enough or people who howled, "fucking fat idiot" when you failed to do something as trivial as catching a rounders ball?
I went through a phase in my second year where I was very fond of having the sort of fun that makes you dance a lot and eat nothing. I stopped this due to the realisation that it may not actually be all that good for my, precarious at best, mental state. Having laid off the appetite suppressants, I realised I was putting weight on and decided to do something about it. I considered my options and immediately ruled out jogging. If I was going to embarrass myself I was at least going to do it somewhere where everyone else was in the same boat as me. I still have no idea why people would choose to huff and puff around in hideous sports wear in broad daylight where it's perfectly possible that you'll bump into an ex or an enemy looking perfectly dressed and cool as a cucumber. You may as well park an exercise bike in the middle of the supermarket as far as I'm concerned.
So, having never been into public humiliation, jogging was out. I didn't even give a minute's thought to the gym, convinced that if there were the types in the Real World to hit bums with hockey sticks and yell insults, it was there that they would lurk. That left me with one viable option: swimming. So I rallied some friends to come with me for my first foray into the world of exercise since school. I was even looking forward to it a bit. There wouldn't be teachers, I wouldn't have to do anything I didn't want to. Surely it couldn't be that bad?
When optimistically planning my swimming trip there were several factors that I failed to take into account. The first of which conspired to humiliate me before I'd even left the changing rooms. Without the aid of glasses or contact lenses I'm really quite blind and unfortunately swimming pretty much precludes both. So, having wrestled my way into my swimming costume, I groped my way towards the lockers where I saw a girl whom I took to be my friend. It was only after I'd rushed up to her, grabbed her arm and asked, "Can we go in together?" that I realised she was in fact a complete stranger. A stranger who now thinks I'm some form of sex pest who's escaped her carer. Embarrassment number one.
The second factor was that the fitness pool is at the opposite side of the building from the changing rooms, and to get to it involves walking past the baby pool and the leisure pool. This in itself isn't that bad, I'm not quite self-absorbed enough to believe that everyone in the entire leisure centre will simultaneously stop what they're doing and stare at me, like in that horrible Boots suncream ad. And even if they did, if you go out looking like me you know that a swimming costume is hardly the worst thing you could be wearing for a walk of shame. Try having to ask a cab driver where you are at seven in the morning while wearing a corset, ripped stockings, one false eyelash and carrying a pair of six inch heels in your hand. No, it was only when combined with factor number three that this became a problem.
The third thing I'd failed to take into consideration was that it would be horribly busy on a Sunday morning. The so-called leisure pool was teeming with the type of adolescents usually found skulking around shopping centres in baseball caps. They'd managed to turn the entire pool into a warzone and were engaged in divebombing and spitting pool water at each other. By now I'd found my friends and was walking arm in arm with a girl who was well endowed, to put it mildly. Unfortunately this got the attention of the ASBO kids and they stopped fighting, coming together in a momentary truce to shout, "Look at the tits on that!" Friend and I sped up, ignoring them, hoping that was it but before the echo of the last comment had finished bouncing off the water, came another shout, "But look at the state of her friend!" Keeping my eyes fixed firmly forward I carried on to the fitness pool with the jeer ringing in my ears. Embarrassment number two.
By the time I got into the water, I didn't care that my friends hadn't really meant it when they'd said they were really unfit and had gone straight into the middle lane, leaving me in the remedial lane. After the previous incidents, I was swimming with a grim determination and was almost considering moving up a lane and attempting to swim faster through sheer bloody-mindedness when I was barged into by a man over taking me. He managed to kick me in the side, causing my head to go under and me to flounder about spluttering in an utterly undignified manner. When I got to the side he apologised to me and I realised that, third and final embarrassment, he only had one arm. I had been over taken by someone with one arm.
It was then that I decided that nothing really changes and I vowed never to do any form of sport or training ever again, blancmange thighs be damned.
and XKCD
