Day Four: 4th January 2011

Day Four: 4^th January 2011

In a very strange and rather unexpected way I felt almost relieved to be returning to work this morning. I felt in need of routine, of the incessant laughter that my job brings and of a way to stop thinking obsessively about my love life. Even I am getting tired of it and it’s my life and lack of love. I knew that in terms of exercise the day was going to prove tricky. The possibility of getting onto the fells was zero and even a quick blast on the nearest hill was unlikely after my final meeting overran by 30 minutes. I would have to be content with something less satisfying, something less, Lakeland. Spinning it had to be.

Spinning is an odd experience. Particularly in the bar of the village rugby club. The clientele are eclectic to say the least and the instructor wears a permanently forlorn expression, his furrowed eyebrows shrieking that he has proper qualifications and was certain he was destined for Harlequins before he moved to Cumbria, with every quizzical raise our efforts elicit. It is clear, not least from the name that spinning was created by somebody under the influence of something not entirely legal. Dance music pumps out as strange stationary bikes with huge hand brakes are mounted and then ridden at terrifying speeds. Only there is no speed, or at least none in the conventional sense. Eyebrow man barks that we are to ‘really go for it’ whilst he gets up and checks something behind the bar – it is amazing how vulnerable you feel as you pedal furiously on the spot as a man strolls casually behind your furiously wobbling backside. By the end of session I hate Florence and the Machine and lean against the bar top in a way that only students on a particularly messy bar crawl usually employ as a technique for staying upright. I hear myself agreeing to go again next week and eyebrow man’s face creases into a smile as he pops my fiver into a pint glass. Even in my painful, exercise engendered fug I wonder if his choice of receptacle is a joke, pointed or even metaphorical. The effort of considering a polysyllabic word is too much however and I slink from the bar into the cold Cumbrian air with a resigned huff. I actually quite enjoyed it…