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Oh God, I am absolutely exhausted! I've just taken up keep-fit. You see, I am a little overweight. No, that's an understatement - I'm a BIG overweight! I have been called cuddly, but that's just an alternative spelling of OBESE. What I've got is not a beergut - it's a donut-gut. I am so unfit I get out of breath opening the fridge. You know those weight to height charts that tell you how much you should weigh if you don't want to be the laughing stock of the neighbourhood? According to those, I should be twenty-two feet tall. |
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And buying clothes... It's a nightmare! When I go into one of those trendy boutiques, the only thing that fits me is the cubicle curtain. They only design clothes for people who are training to be stick-insects. Well, these days, the only real women are stick-insects - if you believe the fashion magazines. Look at all the adverts on telly - beautiful, slim, manicured housewives with immaculate hairdos, gushing about their favourite margarine. Funny, they don't look like that down my local Tesco. Supermodels look not unlike the starving Africans we see on the news - I watched the reports of London Fashion Week and expected Bob Geldorf to pop up on the catwalk and tell us to "focking send your money in". And every magazine has adverts for slimming products, or new wunder-diets - lose weight on half a grapefruit and a pint of cold tea per day. I tried one of those diets once. It said you could eat nothing but fruit, but as much of that as you wanted. I chose Terry's Chocolate Oranges and Meltis Newberry Fruits. I didn't feel hungry at all! But I didn't seem to lose any weight. Incidentally, there used to be a diet sweet called AIDS. I haven't seen that advertised recently... They used to have this peculiar advert for Special K breakfast cereal. There were Mr & Mrs Upwardly-Mobile eating their breakfast on the patio, and the husband suddenly reaches over the marmalade, grabs hold of her stomach and tweaks it. And this soooooothing voice-over says "If you can pinch more than an inch, try the Special K breakfast." Then she leans over and tweaks him back. Bizarre! I thought it was a new form of safe-sex. Of course, in my case it would be more like fondle a foot. Or massage a mile. And just think what it will be when we finally go metric! Pinch 2.54 centimetres doesn't quite have that ring to it... So I decided to get fit. Well, it was a last resort. I went to the Body Shop and asked for a trade-in on the old model, but they just laughed. So, I thought, aerobics. It's all the rage now, innit - Jane Fonda's Workout, the Green Goddess, Mr. Motivator, Mrs Plumber at our local community centre. I went to the Pineapple Dance Centre in Covent Garden - dead trendy! It's a stupid name isn't it - have you ever seen a pineapple dance? You'd never get a leotard over all those spiky bits. I suppose it's no sillier than a tea dance. Anyway, I thought I'd better kit myself out right; leotard and tights, and the obligatory legwarmers - all the gear, all bright red. I looked like a giant piece of salami. Or a Michelin man with an acute case of sunburn. It's just as well I didn't try ballet. I'd never have got into a tutu - I'd have needed a four-four - at least. Anyway, I went to the class, and there were all these stick insects posing round the room like the Kids from Fame, and I was trying not to notice my reflection in all those mirrors, when in walked the instructor and started doing her warm-ups - God, she was like a bendy doll. Wrapping her legs round her ears, her bones must have been triple-jointed. I thought, if she expects me to do that I'm going home right now! Then she cracked her whip and we were off - bend this, stretch that, music by Michael Jackson, accompanying groans by yours truly! Talk about feel the burn - I was in desperate need of the fire extinguisher. I ended up in this ludicrous position with my head between my legs, and my feet crossed over, thinking "Just what is so bad about being an 18 stone weakling?" when finally it ended. Only trouble was, I couldn't move. My knees had locked. My back had padlocked! I was totally stuck. The teacher had to roll me to the changing room like a giant bowling ball. It took four firemen to get me upright again! So I don't think I'll go back again. Apart from the pain and humiliation, there were two problems. The first was that I'm not very good with heights - and I kept falling off the gym mats. And the second was, the classes were all first thing in the morning - you needed to be fit already to get up in time for them. So I shall have to content myself with looking like a Weeble. I have been offered a job, though, which only a person of my stature can handle... when Richard Branson's balloon next takes flight - I will be acting as the ballast!
This was the first article I wrote for Diesel's Dump. I was full of doubts and fears as I trepidatiously uploaded it to Compunet and waited for some feedback. Thankfully, feedback was positive, otherwise Diesel's Dump would have ended there. Later, I amended What A Body and used it as a stand-up routine in a cabaret show. They liked it there, too! |
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