Do you go to a gym? You know, one of those places filled with mirrors depicting depressed and strained fat bastards, red-faced and half a squat away from a hernia? Gym. You know.

Well I don’t. I’ll keep my 125 quid a month to spend on dirty burgers and beer, thank you very much. Ok, and lattes, because I’m a true metrosexual. Though not as true as those vain bastards pumping up their abs, pecs and triceps so they too can look like they’re in advanced steroid abuse just before they go off the rails and murder their wives. I simply hate the discipline. I hate the ‘but you’ll feel so much better afterwards’ ethos. I live for instant gratification. Have no patience. No discipline. Never discipline. Not even for fun or 50 shades.

But we do our Tai Chi in a gym. So they have many implements of torture just lying around. And our guru, our grandmaster takes his responsibilities seriously. Though you’d never believe it to talk to him. And as I see it, our Tai Chi comprises three elements. He would see it as different facets of but one concept, because that’s how they see things in China and High Barnet, complete one-ness. But for me there’s three. First is the ‘forms’, the Tai Chi ‘dance’ that everyone’s seen and finds amusing, because they simply don’t understand. I do it every day and I still don’t understand. But at least one day I’ll be enlightened, whereas for you there’s no hope. The forms represent every action you need to take, but in a slow, stylised and exaggerated style. So that when you do get the chance to hit someone really hard, and then run away very quickly, your balance will be perfect, your strike assured and you won’t hurt your back. Because the second thing we do is the ‘applications’ of the movements. Basically; hitting each other. Or kicking. Head-butting. Stabbing. Nice.

And thirdly, because of who, as a group, we are, we do a lot of warming up, stretching out and stuff that lesser people would think of as ‘pilates’. We’re real men with swords, so we deride ‘pilates’, that’s for Gwyneth Paltrow along with drinking green slime. But as we’re mostly the wrong side of 50 (or even older!!! and still alive; who’d’a thought that possible??) you can’t just start doing high kicks without warming up and stretching out. How this would translate to your would-be assailant in the real world I don’t know yet. Just hope he comes at you so slowly that you have time to do a few ‘downward dogs’ before needing to defend yourself.

So last night we grabbed the exercise balls from the corner. Who fucking invented those things? What kind of sadistic, tortuous, spine-aching bastard thought up such a thing? They probably arose in Abu Graib. And they hurt. Whatever you do on them is just the same exercise you’d perform without it but just 20 times more painful and stressful. Like the pose depicted above. Its hard. Horrible.

And yet even I, exercisaphobe that I am, felt benefits and feelings of not exactly ‘goodness’, more ‘pain, suffering and agony’ but could see some value in such activities.

Off to France early tomorrow morning. Very very early tomorrow morning. Going to spend a few days with Mr & Mrs Oldest Mate, who are refugees out in the Carmargue.

Happy friday

A xxxx