And stretch - two, three, four ....

Acle back in the day.

The fair village of Acle, where the marshes touch the sky

and often wet the feet, boasts many wonderful amenities,

one of which is our "leisure complex".

As the name implies "complexity" is the keyword.  It opens it's

doors to all manner of clubs and societies from indoor bowls

to Slimming World; badmington to Bollywood dancing;

and skateboarding to ferret husbandry.  I made the last one

up but no matter as I'm sure the ferret fraternity would be made

most welcome should they wish to come along.

The Social Club bar

There's even a licenced bar with such reasonable prices that it's

probably one of the few remaining places in this sceptered

isle where you can still get pissed on a fiver and have enough

change left over for a bag of pork scratchings too.

Come one, come all.

But I digress,.  Tucked away in the now old "new extension" lies

the Community Gym and it's there that I've been going recently

every Thursday and Friday for an hour or so in a last ditch

attempt to beat this old body of mine into it's final shape.

On Thursday's you just rock up, pay your money and take your

pick of whichever form of torture takes your fancy.  I tend to

kick off on the exercise bikes and generally manage to clock up

almost half a mile before boredom and stabbing pains in my knees

prompts me to stop.  Then it's on for a spot of step aerobics before

pressing myself firmly against an inflatable ball, rather like something

out of The Prisoner, the object of which is to roll it up and down

the wall using only my bum muscles.  Not a pretty sight!

Easy peasey!

Despite much grunting I haven't yet progressed beyond the smallest

weights and my bingo wings stubbornly remain all ready for

take-off and flapping in the wind.  The grand finale of the session

are the treadmills.  We're still getting acquainted and I swear the

damned things have a sense of humour because how else would you

explain sudden changes of pace from walk to flat out when my

attention wavers for a second.  I haven't actually fallen off yet

but I've come pretty close a couple of times.

They lied!

Friday's are completely different.  It's Pilates class when a motley

and misshapen group of us bend, sway and sweat in unison to the

accompaniment of a cross between womb music and whale song.

It's so soporific that one old dear at the back actually nodded off

doing her recumbent breathing exercises and might well have got

away with it had her snores not risen above our watery soundtrack.

But the real star performer of the group has to be the rather flatulent

old gentleman who always arribes late and karaoke's along to the

music.  And before you ask Alice, he's most certainly not using his 

vocal chords when he hits those high notes.

And collapse - two, three four .... then off to the bar!