So we’re getting married.
Not just talking about it when we’re drunk, or saying we don’t
want to when we’re pissed off with each other.
Properly.
Like booked the registry office properly.
And I thought, right then, I’m going to get that
mythologised pre-baby body I have made up back. You know, the size eight, year
round tan, boobs that don’t look like they’ve been ravaged through
breast-feeding body I've totally never had.
So I joined a dance fitness class.
I probably shouldn’t have eaten the best part of a family
bag of malteasters on the way there.
But fuck it.
I had big hopes that this class was going to right half a
decade’s worth of wrongs so what’s another massive bag of chocolate between
friends?
The first thing I realised on arrival is that music seems to
have moved on whilst I’ve been listening to a combo of radio 2 and The Archers.
For fear of sounding like my mum when I was growing up….
It's just noise now.
A loud awful noise.
Everyone in the class was at least half my age and mouthing
the words and I thought, OK maybe it’s just the warm up. But song after shit
song came on, none of which I recognised.
Nevermind.
I’m going to be sooooo hot and young looking after this
class I can get over the music.
I stumbled my way through the dance routines, eying the
clock every two minutes which I think was probably going backwards.
How can I only have been in there for seven minutes?
The class must surely be ending soon.
And then the titchy instructor says the words that makes anyone
with a hint of social anxiety recoil.
‘Can you get into pairs please?’
Are you shitting me? This is a fitness freaking class, not
Strictly.
And as if finding a partner wasn’t bad enough (most people it turned out had been going to
the class for at least five years,) one of us had to then lie on the floor, grab
the ankles of their partner for support, and lift their legs in the air.
So I’m holding this woman’s ankles with my sweaty hands,
trying not to look up at her crotch and attempting to swing my legs into the
air. And I’m wondering if it’s possible to just do a crowdfunder for
liposuction instead, when I remember how absolutely rancid my trainers are.
I have had them since I was in my early twenties and keen
meaning to buy another pair or at least Febreze this pair, but I hadn’t
anticipated a stranger having her face so close to them.
And I question whether getting a smoking-hot,
twenty-years-younger-than-I-actually-am, catch-my-reflection-in-a–shop-window-and-don’t-realise-it’s-me
body is going to be a tad harder than a couple of stomach crunches.
So I’m going to take a different approach.
As I polish off the rest of the Malteasters on the bus home
I google the most effective Spanx on the market.
Job. Done.