The Aquacise Smirk

"It's five o'clock, honest, I saw it written there plain as day."
d looked at me, and at the scene in front of her.
Then she looked at me again, rather more squintily.
"A...ha.." she said.

The scene in front of her was mainly kids jumping in the pool and twimming, or jumping in the pool and trying to swim, or, mainly, just jumping in the pool and sinking like pink-suited stones, and spluttering helplessly till helped.
This, it was clear to even the meanest of intelligences - by which I mean everyone's but mine - was not a GP Referral aquacise class.
I had rushed and bustled us out of the house to make sure we got there by five, because the class started at five.
I think, to be honest, the jig was up when new people started arriving, perfectly dry kids in hand, and leaving them in the instructor's care.
"Go and ask the lifeguard," said d. "I dare ya."
I did.

"Well, that'll be me not able to read English any more," I said, after miming her to come and meet me halfway round the pool. "That...could be tricky, given what I do for a living..."
"Oh I don't know..." said d with a grin.
Now of course, I could have done some lengths, leaving d in the jacuzzi-pool, but frankly - and I can't stress how important this is - fuck that for a game of soldiers! I'd biked away 300 calories before breakfast, then had the breakfast that those calories comprised of. I'd had a lunch of leftover curry and rice, then walked five miles or so in an hour and a half in the company of Ricky The Git, and Christine, a nice woman who had originally registered us on the GP Referral Programme. It had been just me and them, because they (fairly obviously, if you think about it) don't do the pathways walk unless someone turns up to do it with them, and I was the only one who did.

Now we were about to aquacise our asses off, and then go straight into the gym. I figured I deserved a little bit of jacuzzi-time too!

There's an enormous aqua slide at our pool. It's never been operational while we've been there before, but tonight they turned it on.
"Oh I wanna have a go!" said d. "Come with me?"
"Sure," I said...then, as we approached the steps leading up to it, she added.
"Ohhh, I wanna see you come down. can I see you come down?"
"Sure," I said, doing the Manly Thing.
I slalomed down the thing, smashing myself into a slide-pool at the end and getting water up my nose.
"That was great!" said d.
"Right, now up you go," I said.
"What am I, fuckin' nuts?" said d.
We both slouched off to the jacuzzi, some of us a little more slouchy than others.

The Aquacise was...frankly...what exercise must be like in Hell. I've discovered Ricky's not such a git - it's just there's a face...a face people pull when they are dry and warm and on the side of the pool, watching a bunch of fat fucks and old fucks try and bend themselves repeatedly into unlikely positions. It's the Aquacise Smirk, and this evening, we took our opportunity to loathe and despise Christine for it. Nothing personal.
Then we stumbled, barely aware of our surroundings, up to the gym. We wouldn't have even done this, I'm sure, if we hadn't pre-paid for it on the way in. There was biking and pulling and a new machine from Hell's private stockpile that stetches your leg muscles almost to the point of twanging...and then there was freedom and freezing and discovering that Nandos was just there. Nandos meant protein, and protein was goooooood. And now we're home, altogether more damaged than one should be on a Wednesday, contemplating hot water bottles and snoring with a degree of delight that only those who's worked their asses off can understand.

Blood was 5.5 this morning by the way (after recalibrating. 5.0 originally), so presumably, the half-meds life is going OK. So far (all of three days in, clearly...)

Ni'night blogosphere, I'm sooo out of here...