Thanks to the impossibly fit 50 year old personal trainer who leads my bloated self through the intimidating exercise machine routines with their incomprehensible levers and knobs I am once again deprived of arm movement. On my fourth visit to the gym he put me through what feels like a wringer with probably ridiculously light weights which for this old fart seem unbearably heavy and thanks to his next client – a beach-based real estate agent with no fat that I can detect – being late, I got an extra half hour of this torture. Miraculously, my “faint or puke” reflex has subsided somewhat and I can now move from one set of exercises to another with less steadying time in between. Steadying time, for those unfamiliar with the concept which may or may not be a completely original invention, is the time needed to catch one’s breath, balance and allow blood to return to the brain.

I also “moved in” to “my” locker; which enabled me to try out the facility’s showers and change rooms and found that after a workout, it is highly preferable to have on hand a spray deodorant as opposed to the stick version given the limitations of my previously mentioned arm movement. It would have also desirable to have a locker on the bottom half of the row, not the top, for the same reason.

The showers are the push button water faucet variety, which means they save water and you push that button every 75 seconds or so; the shampoo provided feels more like conditioner in that it doesn’t lather up and so the soap dispenser does the job on the hair as well as the rest of it. Thankfully there are few people in the changeroom when Yours Truly visits so there is no need for jovial banter or the like.

Monday is visit number 5. Should anything exciting or untoward happen, I will write about it.