Roughly six months ago I pretty much gave up drinking. I never wanted to go teetotal but, in spite of video evidence to the contrary, I stopped getting drunk alone. For the past five months I've also given up smoking. Unfortunately smoking and drinking were the most significant aspects of my personality. When people asked, “Do you know Joe?”, it used to be that people responded “Smokey-Joe? That guy who smokes loads?”, or “That guy who's always hammered? Yeah I know him.” Whereas now, when asked, I imagine the response usually something akin to “Who? That dickhead?”
I don't have so many layers of personality that I can start peeling them off and risk exposing the few friends I have to the creepy core that lies within. So instead I decided to add a new layer of subterfuge by becoming super-fit. The results aren't yet visible to the naked eye, but it's at least keeping me busy, although it does feel weird to be doing something that isn't ultimately self-destructive.
Gyms aren't as few and far between as they deserve to be in such a small town as Salisbury. When choosing mine I went for the happy medium. Less expensive than the swanky £50 a month one but better equipped than the scummy £20 a month one that looks like it's run by the homeless. The one I chose turned out to be one of the worst decisions ever made since giving up smoking and drinking in the first place.
There shouldn't be a gymnasium in the world where at any time I am the fittest, healthiest person in the room and yet it happens frequently in my gym (and that includes the unsettlingly out-of-shape staff). Most of the time, however, my gym is a little like exercising in Auschwitz. There are the super-fit guards, who are there every day making the detainees nervous. And then there are the sad, emaciated, prisoners who come for one day, go for a shower and are never seen again. As a tacit supporter of the exercise regime, I guess I'm kind of a collaborator in this scenario.
In any case; guards, Jews, gays, gypsies and disableds I can deal with. It's the children I can't stand. They're everywhere. As soon as it reaches 3:30 the young (and generally chubby) start filing in, apparently with the specific intention of getting in my way. These infants don't even use the same equipment as me; they generally don't use any equipment. They just stand around looking at treadmills, while their absent parents are presumably sat around with their thumbs up their asses.
Coming and going before 3:30 doesn't even solve the problem. Remember being at primary school and going for swimming lessons at the local pool? That pool is now in the same building as my gym! As soon as I find an acceptable way of saying “I'm going to back-hand the next child that touches me” I'm getting it printed on a t-shirt. Fortunately these mini-people aren't allowed in my precious gym, although I sometimes think that's a shame. There's a lot of heavy stuff in there and accidents will happen.
Locked in to a 12 month contract there's very little I can do about this state of affairs except complain and I plan to exercise that right until everyone else is as bitter about it as I. If I find a way of secreting a camera 'pon my person I'll film there one day and you can partake in my misery vicariously.
