Gym musings

Yes, as heralded on Facebook, I have joined a gym. The induction is tonight but there is a problem and it's name is cognitive dissonance. In the same way that Mariah Carey, so myth would have it, doesn't do stairs, I don't do gyms.

I'll spare you the long explanation for this. However, if I say, 'PE teachers using pupils to build elite rugby-playing warrior cadre and sod the rest of the brats', which is slightly unfair (one of them at least taught me to swim) but mostly accurate, and then figure in a decade or so of mixed laziness and insecurity on my part, then I trust you'll get the point.

But, riding a surge of confidence, and with the example of my very, very indie housemate transforming before my eyes in to a tower of a half-marathon running man, albeit one in a Sunn-O))) T-shirt, I've signed up for the Council fitness scheme.

Courtesy of COW on Digbeth High Street, I now have a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a vintage blue Adidas top. I was thinking that all I needed was a pack of Gitanes, my other housemate's fake moustache and a small existentialist paperback and I'd look like some mythical 70's scrawny French footballing stereotype (left winger, naturally), when the idea hit me.

Going to get fit should be fun, not a chore or a duty. But if 'I' don't do gyms, maybe there's another 'I' who does. And by bringing in an element of role-playing to the whole process it may well become fun and enable me to walk in there without feeling overawed by the paragons of gym culture.

So, when I go to the gym I may well be taking 'Alain' with me, as an idea, at least. Maybe as a totemic copy of The Myth of Sisyphus, appropriately enough. Not the moustache though.

And thank you Michael Cera. I was sure there was a reason why I sat through Youth In Revolt earlier this year. And now I know what it is.