It's All A Bit Of A Blur Really

Today I made a rare - despite making regular payments each month - visit to the Cannons Health Club. I Grabbed the opportunity to go during the day, and a working week day at that. I needed to remind myself that going to the gym was still a bearable experience. It felt important that I broke myself in by going at a more civilised time - my usual time, at the end of my working day has become a bit of a trial in the changing rooms lately, due to just about everybody else converging in the gym changing rooms at the same time. And that had been putting me off.

If you chose to go straight after work, as I do because I can't generally go at any other time - that's fine, as long as you realise that most people want to go then too. Those who finish work at Four o'clock have finished their workouts by the time I arrive, and are flip flopping about in various arrangements of towels and tackle in, half out, and just plain out, whilst emerging from the hissy mists of the showers, wide-eyed and flushed, like the discharging passengers from the space ship in Close Encounters. And with seemingly precision timing, those who finish work at Five o'clock, like me, arrive amid this tentative mix-up of clothes and flesh.

As the Five o'clockers arrive, simultaneously ripping off coats, necking bottles of pre-hydration water and chucking enough bags around to satisfy a small battalion of midget mountaineers, the selection process of lockers begins. Only lockers with the key showing will do. And the key showing lockers are always, always, next to the locked lockers, which at this time are being sought out by our damp, head waggling, nose-blowing precursors. And, the locker system at this time normally works like this: locked, unlocked, locked, unlocked. And then the row below, helpfully: unlocked,locked, unlocked . . you get the picture.

There then follows a series of comic capers as clothed and naked men jockey for the square foot of floor accorded a block of about eight lockers. And if you're not careful, If I'm not careful, there's a risk of getting closer to some of the more critical areas of the male anatomy than would be advisable. Especially when the modesty shield towels start to droop from their protective charges and are then vigorously deployed in a kind of mock 1960s twist and shout dance with arms legs and god knows what else flying around. In some cases you could loose an eye I kid you not.

I could do without it. That's why I haven't been to the gym for months. I can't get there until after work - and there's always this scene of Turkish bath theatre to endure, this unwanted flesh-festival. I kind of mind too much bump and grind with my fellow kind. It's a bind. And I'm not so inclined.

So I went this morning. Because I could. And had the place to myself. Result.