Stranger In A Strange Land

"You might wanna follow me in here," called d from the shower.
"Mmm, yeah," I agreed, working on a feature piece for my magazine. It was early, but we didn't have time to hang about. We had an appointment at the gym.
"No, really," she called. "Don't get too engrossed, you should come and shower before we go."
"Meh," I said. "I'm gonna be showering afterwards anyway..."
"Alrighty then," she said. I'm fairly sure there was a note of "way not to get some, dude," in her tone, but I had to get the piece finished before we went.
As it happened, we just about got out in time. The snow, which had come and pretty much gone overnight had hardened, here and there, into treacherous-bastard ice, so we slipped and picked and determinedly heel-toed our way across to the leisure centre.
"Two for Introduction To Zumba please," said d when we got there, technically a minute late.
The guy at reception looked at me.
"Two?" he asked, then blinked, recovering quickly. "Righto, there you go..." He handed us our receipts and we made our way to the dance studio.

I should say, whenever I've told anyone I was joining d for Zumba, I've had two reactions. Women everywhere have gone "Oh....really?" Men have, without exception, gone "What the Hell is Zumba?"

Zumba, for those who don't know - which is to say, the men - is a kind of bizarre combination of aerobics, Salsa, line dancing, battle drill and comedy. It is, usually, an exclusively female pursuit - except, and this should be stressed - in the case of the male participants being Latin and hot. It's a dancing form of group exercise, which - as every man reading this is now saying to himself - explains why it's mainly a female thing.

As we were a minute or so late arriving, there was a pulsing Latin soundtrack coming from the studio, with occasional high-pitched parade-ground yell. Then we were in there, with women from wall to wall, step-step-stepping from side to side and clapping. d and I shuffled to the back, and eventually started step-step-step clapping.

The instructor was the same shouty, sweat-obsessed perkybot from our gym taster a few days ago. Within minutes she was again asking if we were sweating, except this time, she was asking the room.

Of course, Latin dance is all very well if performed by lithe, serpent-hipped people with rhythm and a bodyful of hormones. If performed by a roomful of wheezing, wobbling, unco-ordinated Welsh folk, it loses something of its sultriness. When your instructor has the thickest South Wales accent, and confidently tells you "Don' follow me...I'm a shit dancer!", it's incredibly easy to forget what it is you're there for. And when instructed to do series after series of wide overarm sweeps...your wife's advice about showering before going into the class tends to come back to you, really rather forcefully.
The overarm sweeps were to be performed to the tune of "Rollin' Down The River", on the line "Big wheels keep on turning..."
Well I'm here to tell you that when you hit yourself with a wave of your own rancid armpit-juice with every overarm sweep, the wheels get smaller and smaller in a reeeeeeal big hurry. You kind of end up with hamster wheels keeping on turning pretty quick. When you also have no co-ordination, it slows you down. But there's a good reason why Zumba is generally a womens-and-hot-men's game.

There's a lot of body-shaking involved, and a lot of dance. Both of which are almost calculated to put women at their ease in each other's company, and to make men, by contrast, entirely ill at theirs. There's an air of an Anne Summers party with music about it, and while, surprisingly, I wasn't the only man in the studio, it was like being men in Sex and the City - we were curiosities, little more. Strangers in a strange land of female instinctive understanding.

That said, d had a fantastic time, and made the instructor's day by smiling and laughing probably more than anyone else had breath for. And in her pleasure, my own found some expression. So, clueless curiosity or not, I'll be back next week for more grinding and shaking and foot-slap-clapping - but next week, you can bet your ass I'll shower first!!


As for the rest of the day, a couple of good bits - got a second pair of swimming shorts, so now there's nothing to really stop me swimming most mornings and evenings if I want to. And I did it - I finally ordered a replacement power cord for the bike, so next week, I can start to really get back on track, irrespective of weather, or money, or work or any other damn thing.

That said, we had an Indian takeaway tonight - hardly diet food! But then we're up early tomorrow for another undoubtedly-largely-female exercise class - Time to hit the pool, for the delights of Aquacise! At this point it's anyone's guess what happens on Tuesday, or what prevails - the exercise or the food. We'll just have to see. But the tide is definitely turning. One way or another, the tide is turning from the mayhem of preparing the move, and doing the move, and setting up the hosue, and setting up routines. The next four weeks - the final four weeks of my first year as a Disappearing Man - will see the tide turn forcibly back in my favour, and things will move my way again before we're done with Year One. I will break through my five stone barrier, dammit, before the 1st of March, I will be more than half the way to my goal. I just...will...