Monday 22 February 2016

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!


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