me. We’re just not right for each other. We both need to move on. And besides, £40 half-hours really start to add up. He takes it well. I am allowed to leave his cellar without being skinned alive and turned into an osteopath’s dummy.
Can’t be bothered to go to the gym. My neck feels fine, I need to keep my energy up for sex and tomorrow’s squash match and I’m depressed anyway because of the sixteen people invited to my birthday dinner party on Saturday, only four can come. And the more I’m out on the streets, the more I risk running into the Destroyer of Relationships. And I am, to all intents and purposes, thirty. I am unpopular, I live in an unsellable flat, I have a low sex drive.
Wednesday 17 August
Phone rings. Unlisted phone number. Don’t answer it. Isabel asks why I’m ignoring my phone. I say it’s a work thing. I’m lying to my wife about another woman calling me.
It wasn’t Saskia, it was Denise from the gym. ‘Is William being a naughty boy?’
She is as annoying as Saskia.
‘Six days, William, six days. We’ve got off to such a good start. We need to keep it up, William. Self-loathing might be winning the battle, but let’s not let it win the war.’
I obviously forgot to tick the box on my joining form to say I didn’t want to be contacted by carefully selected associate companies or patronising fitness instructors.
Alex is already on the court when I arrive. He gives me one of his nine racquets and we start rallying. He’s all chatty and matey, but also quite I’ve-hardly-played-at-all-this-year-what-with-the-broken-arm, and I’m all I-haven’t-played-for-three-years, so he’s all yes-but-my-arm-still-really-hurts.
The stupid ball doesn’t bounce and it’s really hot so he wins the first game to love. Except, as he points out patronisingly, you don’t say love in squash.
He wins the next game to love as well, despite complaining about his stupid arm. Then he suggests we rally a bit. I feel like I’m going to be sick, mainly because my tall, gangly physique is clearly not suited to this squitty little game. So I agree.
We rally.
Then he says, can I offer you a few suggestions?
And I say no, piss off, in my head, but yes, that would be great, I am a tennis player, to his face.
He says I need to take the racquet up and back much earlier, I need to face the side not the front, I must never step in that triangle or that triangle and I must watch him as well as the ball.
After that, I can’t even rally any more. He laughs encouragingly so I suggest we play one more game. While I’m trying to remember all the patronising things he has told me in his pretence of being friendly, I lose the first six points quite quickly. Then he sniggers. Then I take a mad, exhausted swipe at another horrible ball from him, lose control of the racquet and hit him square on the jaw.
He yelps, falls to the floor and spits out half a tooth.
‘Sorry about that.’
It takes the rest of the evening to convince Isabel that it was an accident.
Thursday 18 August
Wearing a mac and a trilby hat, I take the circuitous route to the gym. Denise gives another stirring speech to her troop. Come on now, we really must put the time in, mustn’t we? A little effort now will save a lot of pain later. It’s the posh London gym equivalent of the sergeant major’s, ‘Right, you horrible little piece of filth on the bottom of my boot. Drop and give me twenty.’
More yawning on the rowing machine and on the treadmill. When Denise isn’t looking, I hop onto the edges and let the bloody thing run itself. I’m grateful and everything but I don’t see why she has to bully ‘us’ and only ‘us’. Why can’t she bully the fat bloke, the horrible sweaty fat bloke who is always one machine ahead of me on the circuit? The fat bloke who doesn’t wipe away his sweat properly because there’s so much of it. He’s hardly trying at all and I can hardly grip anything he’s been on because it’s all
Can’t be bothered to go to the gym. My neck feels fine, I need to keep my energy up for sex and tomorrow’s squash match and I’m depressed anyway because of the sixteen people invited to my birthday dinner party on Saturday, only four can come. And the more I’m out on the streets, the more I risk running into the Destroyer of Relationships. And I am, to all intents and purposes, thirty. I am unpopular, I live in an unsellable flat, I have a low sex drive.
Wednesday 17 August
Phone rings. Unlisted phone number. Don’t answer it. Isabel asks why I’m ignoring my phone. I say it’s a work thing. I’m lying to my wife about another woman calling me.
It wasn’t Saskia, it was Denise from the gym. ‘Is William being a naughty boy?’
She is as annoying as Saskia.
‘Six days, William, six days. We’ve got off to such a good start. We need to keep it up, William. Self-loathing might be winning the battle, but let’s not let it win the war.’
I obviously forgot to tick the box on my joining form to say I didn’t want to be contacted by carefully selected associate companies or patronising fitness instructors.
Alex is already on the court when I arrive. He gives me one of his nine racquets and we start rallying. He’s all chatty and matey, but also quite I’ve-hardly-played-at-all-this-year-what-with-the-broken-arm, and I’m all I-haven’t-played-for-three-years, so he’s all yes-but-my-arm-still-really-hurts.
The stupid ball doesn’t bounce and it’s really hot so he wins the first game to love. Except, as he points out patronisingly, you don’t say love in squash.
He wins the next game to love as well, despite complaining about his stupid arm. Then he suggests we rally a bit. I feel like I’m going to be sick, mainly because my tall, gangly physique is clearly not suited to this squitty little game. So I agree.
We rally.
Then he says, can I offer you a few suggestions?
And I say no, piss off, in my head, but yes, that would be great, I am a tennis player, to his face.
He says I need to take the racquet up and back much earlier, I need to face the side not the front, I must never step in that triangle or that triangle and I must watch him as well as the ball.
After that, I can’t even rally any more. He laughs encouragingly so I suggest we play one more game. While I’m trying to remember all the patronising things he has told me in his pretence of being friendly, I lose the first six points quite quickly. Then he sniggers. Then I take a mad, exhausted swipe at another horrible ball from him, lose control of the racquet and hit him square on the jaw.
He yelps, falls to the floor and spits out half a tooth.
‘Sorry about that.’
It takes the rest of the evening to convince Isabel that it was an accident.
Thursday 18 August
Wearing a mac and a trilby hat, I take the circuitous route to the gym. Denise gives another stirring speech to her troop. Come on now, we really must put the time in, mustn’t we? A little effort now will save a lot of pain later. It’s the posh London gym equivalent of the sergeant major’s, ‘Right, you horrible little piece of filth on the bottom of my boot. Drop and give me twenty.’
More yawning on the rowing machine and on the treadmill. When Denise isn’t looking, I hop onto the edges and let the bloody thing run itself. I’m grateful and everything but I don’t see why she has to bully ‘us’ and only ‘us’. Why can’t she bully the fat bloke, the horrible sweaty fat bloke who is always one machine ahead of me on the circuit? The fat bloke who doesn’t wipe away his sweat properly because there’s so much of it. He’s hardly trying at all and I can hardly grip anything he’s been on because it’s all
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