So, I decided to start running outdoors again. Yeah, I know: been there, done that, got the washed-out Nike t-shirt (actually it’s a tank top, but whatever) to prove it.

If you’ve been reading this blog since God was a teenager, however, you’ll know that I don’t tend to have much luck with running outdoors. Or even just being outdoors. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say my last experiment in this area was a complete and utter failure. You see, I was afeared. I was scared in that way that I think most women are when they find themselves out in the middle of nowhere, on their own and with no-one to hear them scream should something bad happen. “What if someone tries to kill me?” I would think, as I plodded up some lonely woodland trail or other. “I bet they wouldn’t find my body for YEARS out here!” And so the fear drove me away from those pretty woodland trails and towards the streets near my house, around which I would circle endlessly, passing the same, suburban scenes over and over and over again, seeing the same people multiple times, and getting the same looks of shocked disbelief from them every single time. (If someone’s running in this town, it normally means the police are after them…)

This got very boring, very quickly. Eventually, it got SO boring that I headed back to the gym, and the treadmill. At least people don’t stop what they’re doing to stare at you on the treadmill, you know? Well, not ALL the time, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the treadmill. It’s my “thinking” time. And sometimes it’s my “not thinking” time, where I just put on some good music and let my mind go blank. Or blanker than usual. Other times, though, it’s my “Damn, but this is BORING!” time, and when that started to be the case more often than not, my mind once again turned towards the idea of running outdoors.

This time would be different, I thought. This time I would not be afraid. I would run where I wanted to run, and I would ignore the incredulous stares. It would be ace!

So, one fine day in July (it was literally the ONE fine day in July, seriously), I pulled on my running shoes and headed out into the great outdoors. What could go wrong, I thought? I had a phone with GPS on it. If I got lost, all I had to do was pull up a map, and I’d be found. (Also, it’s a PHONE. That you can use to speak to people on). And if someone tried to kill me, why, I was a RUNNER! I would RUN AWAY. Fast. Or I would poke them in the eye with my keys. It would be fine!

And actually, it was fine. Our town didn’t really exist before the 1960s. It was one of the “new towns” that were built in Scotland around then, and it has a very 1960s look to it: lots of concrete, buildings like boxes, strange bits of “street art” that have long-since become so thickly coated with graffiti that they’ve actually started to look better than they originally did, in that grim, urban kind of way. There is, however, also a river, and the area around the river is rather lovely. Lots of woodland trails that make you feel like you’re out in the country, even although you’re smack-dab in the centre of town, water rushing, birds chirping, flowers, er, flowering… I even saw a group of bunnies, people, and what could be better than that? (Oh, and every now and then, dotted in amongst the foliage, will be some graffiti-coated concrete edifice from the 60s. It’s awesome, seriously.)

Well, I finished my run, and I LOVED it. I actually don’t know this town very well, or not on foot, anyway. In the car, I could take you anywhere, but I’ve never really walked around it, which is a shame, because there are so many little interesting footpaths and trails that it was like a little adventure. I was converted. I was going to be running outside ALL THE TIME from now on, I decided. It would be my “thing”. I would be Fearless Adventurer Amber! I couldn’t wait!

A couple of days later, then, I set out again, with the adventuring. Once again, I headed to the river, and I was having a fine old time. So I ran on. And on. And on. It was great. The trees! The river! More bunnies! And then, in the middle of nowhere, under a random bridge… a tramp! Um, OK. I stopped at this point. The Fear returned. It seemed obvious to me that this man would try and kill me. I mean, why else would you be hanging out under a bridge in the middle of nowhere, if not to kill the next random runner girl that went past? Well, no problem, I thought, I would just double back a bit, and pick up the trail further along the river.

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? And I’m glad YOU can, because I certainly couldn’t see where I going. Leaving my country trail, you see, I found myself in a network of streets. This town is full of such networks. You get into them, and you can wander around for weeks, until someone stumbles across your poor, emaciated form and takes you in. Ironically enough, I knew exactly where I was. It was a part of town I’ve been to many times in the car, and a couple of times on foot, although on those occasions I was with Terry, who is a native of the town and knows its many secrets.

So I knew where I was: I just didn’t know how to get from there to where I wanted to be. Not on foot, anyway. If I’d had my car there, I could have driven straight home. That route, however, would take me along busy main roads, and wasn’t one I really wanted to take on foot, so I turned and plunged back into the woods, determined to work it out. Well, I ran and I ran. I ran for about a mile, and then the path I was on returned me abruptly to the same street I’d started from, having apparently taken me in a large loop. I turned around and set off again, this time taking a different route… which took me to slightly further along the same street I started from. Hmm.

Once again, I set off into the woods. There are lots of different routes through these woods, I discovered. You set off down one track, only to find it splitting into three more tracks a little way along it, with no clue where each of them leads. If only I’d been prepared, like the Famous Five, and brought a ball of string to unwind as I went, I might have had even the slightest clue where I was going, but alas, no.  I knew I’d gone wrong again, when I encountered these:

What was disturbing about this was that I took this photo with my phone camera, which means I was just as close to those sheep as it looks. I was in a field with sheep! Sheep were in a field with me! This was ALL KINDS OF WRONG, and by now I was starting to get a little annoyed, mostly because it was getting close to lunchtime, and if I didn’t get home soon, I’d miss Neighbours. That right there tells you all you need to know, really, doesn’t it?

Well, I turned round and I retraced my weary steps. Arriving back, once again, at the street I’d started from, I encountered a woman in a car, who slowed down and asked me directions to the mall. “If I knew where I was, I might be able to tell you,” I said, which was actually a total LIE, because I am absolutely useless when it comes to giving people directions. I couldn’t direct you from my front door to the bottom of the driveway. I can’t read maps, either, which was why I now realised that when I’d come up with the whole “I can’t possibly get lost because I have Google maps on my phone” thing, I’d obviously been smoking crack:

The map, then, was no good to me, and time was a-wastin’, so I decided to admit defeat, call Terry and ask him to come and get me. This would be humiliating, sure: I mean, I was “lost” in a place I knew well, and which I could have driven home from in a matter of minutes, but I figured walking back along that route would be a) dangerous and b) time-consuming, so I sucked it up, got my phone back out…

… and it had no credit on it. OF COURSE NOT.

This has long been a bone of contention between Terry and I. When I got my iPhone, you see, Terry insisted we go for a Pay-as-You-Go tariff, his reasoning being that as I never, ever phone anyone anyway, it would be a waste of money to pay a monthly fee for it. “You could put £10 worth of credit on the phone and it would last you all year,” said Terry, little knowing that I would burn through three times that amount in the space of ten minutes at Gran Canaria airport just a few short months later.

We argued about this for a while. My fear was that, with Pay-as-You-Go, I would always run out of credit at the exact moment I most needed it. It was inevitable, I said. AND WHO WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT, TERRY, HUH? HUH?

So I had no credit. I couldn’t phone Terry, or, indeed anyone else. And I had no money. Of COURSE NOT. Because when you go running in the middle of nowhere, you don’t take anything with you that could conceivably be of any use, do you?

So I sent Terry an email. The phone allowed me to do this, luckily. (Actually, the more I think about it, the more grateful I am that emergency calls are free on these things. Because if they weren’t, and I got into an ACTUAL emergency, I’d have to send the police an email saying, “Help! Am being attacked!” And, knowing me, because I really detest text speak, and can never bring myself to use it, I would type it all out totally correctly, and then spell-check it before hitting send.) Unluckily, however, Terry is not like me, and doesn’t spend all day hovering over his email like a giant bat. So it took him ten minutes to read my message, during which I had decided to embark upon the long road home, using the only route I knew would definitely take me there, and not send me back to the sheep.

Now, imagine you get an email from your wife saying that she is lost, and needs your help. What do you do? Do you call her, say? OF COURSE NOT. You simply send her an email in response, and you do this because YOU DO NOT KNOW HER PHONE NUMBER.

No, Terry and I do not know each other’s phone numbers. In fairness, we don’t really need to, because we have them programmed into our phones. This is of no use to Terry whatsoever, though, because when he got my email, his phone battery was dead. OF COURSE IT was. Terry’s phone is almost always dead, and when it’s not dead? It’s lost. He’s not big on the whole cellphone thing, either, you see.

Just to recap, then: my phone has no credit, his has no battery life. He doesn’t have my phone number, I don’t have a brain. WE FAIL. At everything. GOD.

To bring this lengthy story to an end, though, I emailed Terry my number, he called me, and a few minutes later, came to my rescue. And all the way home, he pointed out the routes I COULD have taken. Which is really the story of my life.

(I now take spare change with me when I go running. Terry keeps his phone charged, and I always have credit on my phone. Not all of these statements are true…)

Quick swine flu update: Terry had the vaccination yesterday, and, much to my surprise, so did I. In fact, they gave me the vaccination for the regular flu at the same time, so I felt a bit like a walking pincushion. Contrary to what we were told last week, it turns out that a lot of people who’ve been offered the vaccine have turned it down, and it also seems that new supplies have arrived, so there now does seem to be enough go around, and thank goodness for that! Despite the dire warnings we’d read about the vaccine, we’re both absolutely fine – sore arms, but nothing more, so hopefully we will live!

Now, who wants a random act of stupidity? Oh. No one. Well, here’s one from last week, anyway:

So, picture it: I’m at the gym, plodding through a run on the treadmill, and thinking about the half-assed fancy dress “costume” I’m going to wear this weekend. (Because, yes, we’re going to another fancy dress party this weekend. Hee!) Suddenly, though, the music I’m listening to is rudely interrupted as something small and rectangular goes flying past my head and lands with a sickening crash on the floor behind the machine. I twist myself round, while still trying to keep running, and, whoops! It’s my iPhone!

I hit the “Emergency Stop” button on the treadmill, and do a kind of comedy lurch as I try to keep my balance while the machine shudders to a halt. Then I jump off, grab the phone, and, oh, miracle of miracles! It works!

So I get back onto the machine, re-set it and start running again, this time thanking my lucky stars that I DIDN’T just wreck my phone, and wondering how on EARTH I managed to throw it across the gym. The phone, you see, was sitting where it always sits: on the shelf at the front of the treadmill. It had never taken to the air before, and I was just pondering the theory that I must have somehow got my elbow caught in the headphone cable and kinda flicked it across the room, when…

My music cuts out suddenly and a small, rectangular object goes flying past my head.

WHOOPS. I. DID. IT. AGAIN.

I once again performed my comedy lurch, and once again rescued the phone, and I am both surprised and amazed – totally AMAZED – to report that, once again, it was still working. Not even a scratch! My reputation in the gym, however, was in tatters, because although it was fairly empty at the time, needless to say, everyone there was crowded around me like paparazzi. D’oh! 

(Oh, and just in case anyone thinks I exaggerate about this strange behaviour of The Others, my friend Mhairi goes to the same gym, and has noticed exactly the same thing. So either the folks there really are weird, or both Mhairi and I exert a powerful magnetism that draws Others to us like Rubin to a radiator.)

I did get back on the treadmill again, but I’d only been running for five minutes (with my eyes firmly fixed on my phone and my elbows clamped to my sides) when Bambi Girl arrived. Bambi Girl is my shadow at the gym. No matter what time of day I go there, she’s there. I think she might actually live there or something. And no matter which machine I choose to use, she chooses the one right next to it, or just one away. I’ve experimented with using different machines, just to see if this theory of mine holds true, and yup: it doesn’t matter which one I use, she’ll be right there next to me, like me and my shadow.  I call her “Bambi Girl” because after walking slowly for ten minutes or so, BG will suddenly ram the speed up on the treadmill, execute this weird kind of Bamb-like leap into the air, and then run for a few minutes before her twenty minute cooldown. It’s actually quite impressive.

Not as impressive as my iPhone-flicking maneouvre, though.  I think The Others will have to go quite some way to beat THAT one…

Riddle me this, readers:

You’re at the gym. It’s empty, but for one solitary person – a clumsy redhead, say – who is wheezing away on the treadmill right next to the wall. This treadmill is one of about ten such machines, so there are lots to choose from. Do you:

a) Use the treadmill furthest away from the wheezy redhead.

b) Use one in the middle of the row, so you’re not too close to the wheezy redhead, but not so far away that she’ll worry that she smells or something.

c) Use the treadmill RIGHT NEXT TO HERS, even although there are, as noted, about eight other ones to choose from.

d) Leave the gym immediately. Ain’t no way you’re sharing space with a GINGER.

I would choose option A. This is because I hate people, and I like a bit of space while I’m working out. Also because I am apparently incapable of listening to music without kind of mouthing along to the words, and sometimes, you know, busting some moves.  I’ve been listening to a lot of Lady Gaga on my runs: you can imagine how good THAT looks. Put it this way: you totally CAN read my poker face. GOD. When I’m not singing, though, my mouth just kind of hangs open, like a slack-jawed yokel, and I CANNOT keep it closed. Which is… nice.

So, yes, I would choose option A every time.  Every other member of our gym, though? Option C. Doesn’t matter how many machines are free, they will choose the one next to mine. Every. Time.  This is how The Others behave, obviously. It kind of horrifies me, because as well as the aforementioned “mouthing”,  I sound like I’m having a fit when I run. Seriously, it’s like I’m dying. And when someone else is running along just an arm’s length away from me, I have to spend the whole run repeating, “Shut your mouth. Be quiet. Stop singing. Shut your mouth. Be quiet!” (In my own head, obviously. Well, at least I THINK I say it in my own head…)

(Note: I obviously don’t mind people being near me if the gym is busy. Well, I do, but I don’t feel I can complain about it. I’m talking about when it’s as quiet as the grave, though, and I’m the only other person in it. )

This is, of course, the same phenomenon I used to notice when I would go swimming at the gym, and instantly my lane would fill with fifteen other people, while the rest of the pool remained totally empty. Terry says people just like a bit of company, and I’m weird. This may well be true. Either that or it’s the “If you’re crazy, come and sit next to me!” sign on my forehead…

Today I did my first ever 10km run. 10km!

And OK, I did it on the treadmill rather than outside, and I didn’t exactly break the land speed record in the process, but I did manage to run for the full 10km without stopping or walking, AND I did it without having my own choice of music to listen to, thanks to my iPhone deciding to reach critical battery when I still had two kilometres to go. I knew that if I reached my goal, I’d want to take the photo above (featuring a guest appearance by the enormous head of Lily Allen), so I had to turn off the phone and resort to watching the only music station available on the treadmill, which was called FLAUNT. And which played the most depressing video I have ever seen in my life. Evereverever. Seriously, it was by someone called “Just Jack” and it was called “The Day I Died.” Can you guess what it was about? CAN YOU?

“Now we have a song about a man who gets run over by a taxi,” intoned the disembodied voice-over man on FLAUNT. “And dies.”

And sure enough: the man got run over by a taxi. And died. We, the viewing audience, were treated to this event in all its heart-breaking misery. We saw the man get up, and have a jolly breakfast with his loving wife and cute little kids. We saw him kiss them goodbye, and leave for work, taking a quick moment as he opened the door to look back on his loving family and reflect on how very lucky he was to have them. The family, meanwhile, looked back at him, all smiles and thankfulness. And the whole time this was happening, we, the audience, knew that the man was about to be run over by a taxi. It actually made me want to die. I ran the whole of the last kilometre thinking “OMG! OMG! His wife! And those kids! It was just an ordinary day, but then he… he… DIED! Wah! What if that happens to me? Or Terry? Or my parents? What if, on this very ordinary Wednesday, I am, in fact, about to be run over by a taxi? And I’ll have spent the last 72 minutes and 38 seconds of my life running on the spot, on this stupid machine?”

What a total downer.

Seriously, if you run, and you’re looking for music to motivate you, don’t choose “The Day I Died”. Because at the end of my run, as happy as I was with the achievement, all I could think about was that poor, poor man, and his wife and kids. I hate FLAUNT. I’m charging my iPhone as I write this, so I never have to watch FLAUNT again. Then I’m loading it with songs called “Fluffy Bunnies Who Totally Don’t Die During the Song” and “No Taxis in This One!”

Anyway. I ran 10km, but I had the weight of the world on my shoulders for the last km, and was so depressed it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other, so it was more like 12km. It was like FLAUNT actually wanted me to fail, you know?

I also have another milestone to celebrate this week, as The Fashion Police had its 3rd birthday yesterday. So I’ve spent three years now writing about how much I hate Crocs and harem pants, which I guess is quite an odd thing to spend three years doing when you could get run over by a taxi at any given time. Still, it pays the bills, so happy birthday, Fashion Police, here’s to three more taxi-free years! I hope.

Wow, see how easy it is to get out of the habit of blogging when there’s nothing at all happening?

Lately life has entered one of those weird “frantically-busy-but-also-mind-numbingly-boring” phases. In fact, I don’t think I’ve left the house in the past couple of weeks other than to visit the parents/walk the dog/go to the gym. THAT’S how dull it’s been.

Oh, and I started going running. Like, running outside, as opposed to on the treadmill. Because I figured that the coming winter was JUST THE TIME to start a hobby that involves being out of doors all the time. D’oh! I thought it would be fun, though: I had this image of myself, a lonely yet dignified figure, battling bravely through rain, hail and snow to pound those pavements, and saying things like, “I’m just addicted to exercise!” and “It totally clears my mind and gives me, like, space to be ME, you know?”

Of course, I was obviously on crack when I thought these things because I am forced to run through Bandit Country. Well, not “forced” exactly. I mean, no one has actually held a gun to my head and said “Run through Bandit Country, wench! Run like the wind!” Or not yet, anyway. The aforementioned all work/no play scenario means that I just don’t have time to drive somewhere nice to run, though, so Bandit Country it is. And it’s … an experience. I dunno, maybe it’s the same no matter where you run, but people here actually stop and stare as you go by, with their mouths open in astonishment. Yesterday I ran past a group of women with their kids, and they all actually stopped their conversation so they could turn round and watch me. And trust me, I was moving so slowly I was almost going backwards, so they weren’t open mouthed with awe.

Still, at least I’ll be able to run away now if someone tries to attack me with a branch again!

Anyway, I’m going to try and keep at it for… well, a while at least. Maybe until next week, because by then we’ll be deeply into winter here, and I won’t want to leave the house at all. Ever. Terry, meanwhile, is currently in training for a 10k AND a triathlon. Because that’s what kind of crazy HE is. He did ask me to join him in running the 10k, but it cost £16 (Why, I could buy another green dress for that kinda cash!) and you’re not allowed to listen to music while you run. Oh, and it would kill me. Maybe next year lifetime.

OK, February, you win. It’s become clear to me now that absolutely EVERYTHING I try to do this month is doomed to epic failure, so I’m just going to go back to bed until March, OK? Actually, wait: make that May. I’ll get up when it’s Spring and not before…

So, I haven’t been to the gym this month, other than one Body Pump class that was so long ago I’ve almost forgotten doing it. This has been particularly annoying to me, because on the last day of January, I went out and bought a bunch of brand new gym clothes.  I figured it was the only way I’d be able to motivate myself to actually go to the gym because, OK, they were exercise clothes, and therefore ugly by nature, but beggars can’t be choosers, and if new gym clothes were all that was on offer for the month, then by God, I would be taking full advantage of them!

Except I wouldn’t, because the day after I bought them, the snow came. And stayed for a week. During that time, not only was it dangerous to drive (Well, dangerous for ME to drive, I mean), the horrendous weather forced me to curl up into a tight little ball and not move. Just in case I haven’t made myself clear enough the million or so other times I’ve mentioned this: I DON’T “DO” COLD.

The week after that (last week), I caught the cold. Oh, and it snowed. Again. So all gym-going was put on hold that week too, making this week the first time this month that I haven’t had an excuse not to go to the gym. Yesterday, though… well, yesterday was Monday, and we visit Terry’s mum on a Monday, which leaves me with less time to do my actual work for the day, so I decided to let myself off the hook when I woke up at the appointed time and then totally failed to get up and go to the gym.

Which brings us to today.

Today was Body Combat. It’s my favourite class, so last night I prepared for it by laying out my gym clothes in preparation for the morning, and then lying awake all night. I didn’t do the last bit deliberately, you understand: it’s just that my brain likes to do this thing whereby if it knows I have to get up early the next day it will keep me awake, purely so it can go, “Ooh! Not long now! Just a few, short hours until you have to get up, in fact! Man, you’re going to feel like CRAP. You hate getting up early, don’t you? Don’t blame you: you should really have been asleep HOURS ago if you wanted to feel anything like “awake” when that alarm goes off. Seriously, you’re going to feel SO BAD you’re going to pray for the sweet release of death. Even if you go to sleep RIGHT NOW, you’ll still not get enough sleep, and you’ll feel TERRIBLE, like absolutely HORRENDOUS. Man, this going to SUCK!” And so on and so forth.

All of this internal chatter, however, meant that I was awake a good hour and a half before my alarm went off, and even although I sank into the deepest and most blissful sleep imaginable minutes before it did, by that point I had spent so much time thinking about how I was going to get up and go to the gym that there was no way in hell I wasn’t going to actually do it. Seriously, I had even dreamt about that Body Combat class during the short periods of sleep I managed to snatch. I wish I was joking.

Anyway. I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on my (Shiny! New!) gym clothes and headed out to the car.

Which was, of course, totally frozen solid, with both locks impenetrable. %$£^&&”^*&!!!!!!

This was mostly my fault. You see, this is now the THIRD time this has happened to me this month. It happened for the second time on Saturday morning, when I tried to go to my optician’s appointment, and found the car locks frozen solid. That night we went to visit my parents, and I whined so much about my passenger-side entry, and trips up and down the driveway with a mug of hot water, that my dad went out to his garage and returned with a can of  “LOCKS NOT FREEZE!” or something, which he gave me with instructions to spray it on the locks.

(Aside: where does my dad GET all this stuff? Seriously, you could go round there and say, “Damn, I really wish I had a flux capacitor,” and my dad will get this thoughtful look on his face and say, “You know, I think I may have one of those in the garage…” And he WILL. It’s amazing. Sadly, this doesn’t work for Christian Louboutin shoes and ponies, though: I’ve checked.)

Obviously, I brought the LOCKS NOT FREEZE! home with me, put it carefully away in the spare room wardrobe, and forgot all about it. Until this morning, when I once again was forced to enter the car via the passenger side, having first of all travelled up and down the driveway three times with a mug of hot water. GOD.

(Yes, dad, I have sprayed the locks now. Thanks!)

Luckily for me, I now have the whole “Mug/hot water/passenger side entry” down to such a fine art that I’ll probably still be getting into the car via the passenger side by June, out of sheer force of habit, so by the time I finally pulled out of the driveway, I was still in plenty of time for my Body Combat class, and feeling not a little bit smug about it, let me tell you. At last, I was following through on a promise I had made to myself! I was going to the gym, and even although it would hurt, I knew that by the time I got home I would be feeling even MORE smug, and so it would all have been worthwhile.

Of course, I had forgotten an important fact here: I had forgotten that, last I checked, I was still Amber, and things just don’t tend to work out like that for me.

That’s probably why, after having driven for approximately three minutes, I encountered a traffic jam. And I sat in that traffic jam, almost without moving, for the next 25 minutes. When the time came for my class to start, and I was still sitting in the same place, still a good 15 – 20 minutes away from the gym, I accepted the inevitable, got out of the car and started walking amongst the stationery traffic, singing “Everybody Hurts” to the sky. Whoops, no, that was just in my own head. What I actually did, was turn the car around and return home*, taking a curiously circuitous route that was only vaguely familiar to me, on account of all of the stationery traffic that was just littered around the roads, going nowhere. It was like a scene out of one of those “End of the world, OMG, only Will Smith can save us now!” movies, honestly.

And this is why I try not to ever leave the house, if I can possibly help it. Every time I do, it’s just all stressstressstress, failfailfail, and I normally end up buying something I don’t actually need, into the bargain. (Not today, though. Because I would’ve needed to actually GO somewhere to have been able to buy something, and instead I just drove around, wasting my precious, precious, heart-breakingly expensive fuel instead. AAAARGH!)

I’m going back to bed now. Wake me up when it’s Spring, would you?

* Yes, I know, I could’ve just gone to the gym anyway. But it would probably have taken me another 30 minutes to get there, God knows how long to get back, and anyway: by that point? I just didn’t want to.

So, I went to the gym. In fact, I went to a Boxercise class, and here’s the thing about that: if you ever catch me mentioning doing another one, I want you to do that “reaching through the screen and slapping me” thing we discussed earier this week, m’kay?

Now, it’s not that Boxercise is unbelievably hard or anything. I mean, it might be, for all I know, but the thing is, I don’t know, because when I went, I hadn’t been to the gym for …. let’s just say “a while”… so really, anything I tried would probably have seemed hard to me.

Or then again, maybe not: before going to the class I did, of course, Twitter and Facebook obsessively about it, and the feedback I got from people who had actually done a Boxercise class (as opposed to, say, just reading about it online and thinking, “Ooh! Hitting stuff! And not getting in trouble for it! Book me in!” ) was mostly derisive laughter and advice about taking out private health insurance first. So, naturally, I ignored all of this, and went to the class anyway.

I did, however, take Terry with me. See, I’d read a bit about this. I’d read, for instance, that there might be something called “pad work”, which is where one person holds up a couple of big pads and the other person beats the crap out of them, while wearing boxing gloves. As much fun as this sounded, as soon as I read about it I realised that the fact two people were involved in this “pad work” would mean that we would probably be told to “partner up”. And I? Do not “partner up”. Mostly because… well, because I am That Girl who is always left standing on her own, smiling sheepishly, when everyone else has picked their partners for games and stuff. You know, the one the gym teacher is forced to allocate a team/partner, and then give that team/partner some extra points to make up for their “handicap”.  And even then, everyone’ll be going, “Aww, miss, do we HAVE to have Amber in our team?” or “We had Amber LAST time, it’s not fair!” And then you end up partnered with that smelly kid no one else will speak to, and after that, the smelly kid thinks s/he is your BFF, and never lets you out of his/her sight from that moment on.

(The one exception to this: during stupid ass “team building” exercises when I used to work in an office, and we’d be required to discuss things in pairs and then write our conclusions down on a flip chart with a magic marker. Oh, everyone wanted to be my partner THEN, let me tell you. Because they’d be all, “You’re the writer! You can do the ‘writing down’ bit!” And I’d be all, “Not that kind of writer, dumbass.” Then I’d smack them.)

Anyway, as I was saying, I am That Girl, and in a bid not to be That Girl during the Boxercise class, I took Terry with me.

What I neglected to consider when I did this: Terry is much bigger than me. Also: much stronger. Oh, and male.

What the gym instructor said when I indicated that I wanted Terry to be my partner for the “pad work”:  “NO.”

Once again, I was That Girl.

The last woman standing was forced to be my partner. She, too, was much stronger than me, on account of me being a weakling. I think she would’ve been prepared to accept this as not being my fault, exactly, but I reckon she found it harder to accept the fact that I totally can’t count. Or remember things. So when the instructor said, “OK, give me 20 crosses, 40 uppercuts, eleventy one really fast poky ones, same on the other side, then 20 hooks, then 35 reverse-cross-hookercuts,” I was all, “Errr….?”

In the end, my partner had to actually count my punches out loud for me. And I STILL got it wrong. Like, I’d think I’d done 52, but I’d actually only have done eight. (HOW?) On the way out of the class, I’m sure I heard my poor partner say to everyone else, “Hey, word to the wise: never partner That Girl….” but I may have just imagined that.

I don’t think I’ll ever be a boxer, somehow. Especially given that I had trouble getting out of bed this morning because I was so sore from yesterday’s exertions…

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of Terry and I joining the gym. We decided to celebrate the occasion by forgetting to renew our membership, so that when we turned up for Body Pump on Monday morning and tried to swipe our membership cards, the turnstiles wouldn’t open for us and a recorded message started blasting through the entire gym saying, “INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! GUESS WHO HASN’T PAID THEIR MEMBERSHIP FEES?!”

Ok, maybe not that last bit, but a small queue did form behind us as we resolutely tried to force our way through the barriers, completely oblivious to the fact that the gym had PUT A BLOCK ON OUR CARDS. Even although the membership technically doesn’t run out until Friday. GOD. Luckily, Terry had brought our bank details with him, so we were able to sort things out and gain access to Body Pump, but the experience had clearly put me off my stride, because when we finally made it into the studio I managed to select The Step That Always Falls Apart As Soon As You Touch it, and it clattered to the floor in three pieces, making so much noise that everyone stopped what they were doing to look at me.

Then I picked it up and immediately dropped it again.

Then I picked it up a third time, swung round and… barrelled straight into the punch bag that hangs from the ceiling.

The next morning, when we arrived for Body Combat, we discovered that our cards were STILL BLOCKED, and riot police were preventing us from entering the gym. I wonder why?

Anyway, despite the fact that I drop the equipment on a regular basis and haven’t been able to use the pool since January, I’m actually feeling pretty pleased with myself that I lasted out the entire year, because let’s face it, I really didn’t expect to. At all. I mean, I was really just humouring Terry when I agreed to join up, and my intention was to only use the sauna and spa, and to make sure I didn’t break a sweat, ever. But somehow I managed to keep going, and am now actually going even more regularly than I did to start with, when I was still in hot pursuit of that free towel. Yay me!

And now I’m going to go eat cake…

Today at the gym (four times in a row! GO ME!), before the class even started, I managed to:

1. Drop a barbell on my thumb, creating the kind of pain that makes your heart rise into your mouth, and makes you feel like you’re going to throw up any second.

2. During a gap in the ear-splittingly loud music that was playing at the time, shout out the phrase, “HE LIKES TO STOP AND PEE ALL THE TIME!”

I think I may be starting to understand why I’m Amber-No-Mates at the gym…

(On that second one, I was having a shouted conversation with Terry at the time, about a man I’d spotted through the window, who was out running with his two dogs.

Me: I wish I could go running with Rubin!
Terry: You could go running with Rubin.
Me: No I couldn’t: I’d never get to do any running because he…
[MUSIC STOPS]

Well, you know the rest. And so does everyone who was in Body Pump this morning. Gah.)

On the plus side, this product, on sale in the gym’s reception, always makes me smile, so it’s a good job I always have my phone camera with me at the gym, for those “pretending to be busy” moments:

OMG, size zero! Isn’t it terrible the pressure kids are under to be skinny these days? Particularly given that, as we all know for a fact, size zero is ugly and unattractive, and ALL MEN hate women who are that size. Because those women are not “real” women. Nosiree.

Note: I’m being sarcastic, by the way, just in case anyone didn’t realise. (And trust me, I have to say that because there’s pretty much always someone who doesn’t. Case in point: the angry comments I sometimes get on this entry from people who want to tell me off for being so “nasty” about redheads and “hating on them”. Because yes, folks, I am secretly one of the redhead hatrz. That’s why I have this headfull of red hair, you know? Because I hate it. Not as much as I hate the use of the phrase “hating on”, though.)

Where was I? Oh yes, size zero. Yes, I was being sarcastic above, because God knows, this is my pet hate right now, the way people would never in a million years make a derogatory comment about larger women (and quite rightly so), but think it’s absolutely fine to call thin ones “ugly” and tell them endlessly than no men find them attractive. Names like “stick insects” and “lollipop heads” and “skeletons” are bandied about with gay abandon in the UK media right now (and particularly in the fashion blogosphere, where slagging off the skinny girls is de rigeur these days), but overweight people are regularly described as “curvy” and “voluptuous” and “real women”. (What are the thin ones, then? Imaginary?)

It winds me up. So much, in fact, that I don’t think I can even trust myself to write any more about it without it degenarating into an incoherent rant. Even more so than it has already, I mean. Here, have a picture of my dog:

People, my winter holiday is BACK ON. Even if I have to, I dunno, sell Rubin or something to pay for it. Because seriously, folks. SERIOUSLY. Enough with the rain already. I mean, people had to be rescued by boat from the town next door to ours last night because of all the rain/flooding, and other people had to be airlifted to the local hospital because of it. Which would really, really suck, you know?

Now, we live in Scotland, where it’s pretty much all hills, all the time, so trust me: we just don’t get that much flooding. I’m starting to feel like we’re in The Bible or something. I’m also starting to think that if we don’t get the hell out of Dodge, and soon, we’ll grow webbed feet and have to learn how to breathe under water. And I know that sounds cool, but I just don’t think it would be somehow.

The result of all of this apocalyptic weather? As I said, the winter holiday is a goer. It looks like we will just be going to the Canaries, which is exactly what I thought would happen, because there is seriously nowhere cheaper (that’s within five hours of the UK and hot at that time of year), but at this point I really don’t care because GIVE ME SUN. Please. I’m desperate here.

In slightly better news, my stint at the gym last Thursday turned out not to be an isolated event after all, and so far I have been every day this week (I know!), doing Body Pump, Body Combat and, today, Body Attack. So, yeah, I feel like my body really has been attacked now, for sure.

I also feel kind of like the new girl at high school, because the thing about all of these classes is that everyone else already seems to know each other. Now, I know people are always recommending the gym as a place to make new friends, but I just don’t see how that can be done easily – and not just because people tend to take an instant dislike to me. (No, seriously, I think it’s because my "resting face" is a frown. And maybe because if I don’t have my contact lenses on, I will walk right past people without recognising them, and that tends to cause offence.) I mean, how do you make friends at the gym? Do you just walk up to people while they’re on the treadmill and stand next to them shouting, "HI! WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?" Because that would be weird.

Note: I don’t actually go to the gym to make friends, by the way. I go to the gym because I like making myself look like someone who has only recently learned how to walk unaided, obviously. It’s just that, when I walk into these classes, I always have a bit of a sinking feeling as I realise that everyone else is standing around in little cliques, and then I have to sit down on the floor by myself and pretend there is something super-interesting on my phone that I absolutely have to look at RIGHT NOW.

In conclusion: I suck at making friends with people. But I have been to the gym three times already this week so, you know, yay me!