Just when I was starting to feel like Eurydice trapped forever in the cold underworld, here comes Orpheus. A brave little smattering of snowdrops in the wasteland out back, the reappearance of daylight in the mornings and a pushing back of the darkness until after I get home from work, and a pleasant mildness in the air are all it takes to put a spring back in my step.
The joy of realizing that the earth is still turning despite the financial crisis is almost but not quite worth the misery of the longest coldest winter in 30 years. Winters in northern Europe are unpleasant even if you have been going to the gym since you were 20. At my time of life they don't get any easier. The crisis has also brought the subject of retirement into sharp relief. Mine should be a mere 12 years away, Zeno's dichotomy permitting, and Belgium with its damp climate is No Place for Old Men, or women for that matter.
I have therefore been idly perusing locations for my eventual retirement. I have long favoured a return to France, preferably in the warmer bit south of the Loire but a safe distance from the seriously hot bits. The crisis has come a tad too soon for my liking. It appears a number of Brits are selling up and going home, their pensions having lost up to a third of their value due to the drop in the exchange rate. If I were to retire in a year or two I could clean up. By the time I am ready to buy some serious hardwood patio furniture, I suspect the wheel of purchasing power will have turned and I find myself living next door to a Moldovan version of Boycie and Marlene.
As an addition to my fitness accoutrements, I bought an "mp3 player", I think they call them, to relieve the tedium of marching, cycling and moonwalking. There's only so much ambient techno a girl can take. It took about six weeks to find out the difference between an iPod and a mp3 (price, it appears) and much quizzing of McChe, who knows about these modern contraptions. It's all changed since I had a walkman, Detailed perusing of technical manuals and several visits to Media Markt later, I finally came out with a pretty fuchsia pink one to match my hoodie. Then I had to figure out how it worked and put some music on it. Finally I was ready to pump. I think that's the expression.
Fantastic! I currently have 405 tracks on it and it's still only half full. Just think how many walkmans - walkmen - you'd have needed to have that much music at your fingertips. I find the Stones are very good for workouts, as long as you don't get carried away and start impersonating Jagger. I have to FF on Sympathy for the Devil and Brown Sugar now, since the manager came and told me off for doing the "woo-woos" too loud. 'YMCA' is also off the menu for similar reasons. The woman on the next treadmill says the eyepatch will be off next week, and is not going to press charges.
The biggest problem was getting the ear pieces to stay in. My earholes must be malformed, as no matter how hard I screwed them in, they fell out again within seconds. I eventually gave up and at the risk of looking like Lt Uhura from Star Trek, (although not a lot) used my Skype headset. Fully equipped for another hour of cardiovascular stimulation, I hit the gym again yesterday after work.
Friday afternoons are a good time, as many Brussels workers clear off for the weekend and you can get on all the machines straight away. I was delighted to find a near empty row of treadmills. I fired one up and stomped away through Jumping Jack Flash, Satisfaction and Tumbling Dice, and was just stepping up a gear for Midnight Rambler, when I noticed one of the trainers jumping up and down in front of me. A bit of one-to-one is always welcome, so I nodded cheerily and gave him the thumbs-up. He was doing a strange sort of routine, which involved making throat-cutting gestures, cupping his hands over his ears and pointing towards the exit. I tried my best to copy the choreography but he kept changing the moves, putting his hands on his head and looking increasingly red in the face. Eventually he jumped up and hit the emergency stop button.
Suffice it to say that standing out on the main road in one's sweaty pink tracksuit is not how I wish to be seen by my co-workers, some of whom were just making their way towards the metro. I did not wish to be mistaken for Miss Vicky Pollard innit. So I had no choice but to gently jog in a homeward direction, doing the woo-woos as loud as I could.
St Valentine is the patron saint of lovers, romance, engaged couples, young people and, er, beekeepers. He also looks after, in his own way, jewellers, florists, greetings card manufacturers, restaurants, producers of red velvet and manufacturers of condoms, lingerie and beer goggles.
One should pray to St Valentine to heal a chagrin d'amour epilepsy, fainting or swooning, bee stings and the plague. I suppose we should throw in STDs, although using a condom is a better guarantee.
And he is, of course, the patron saint of chocolatiers. Valentine's Day is known in some parts of the Caribbean as the "Fiesta molto chocolata yaya". For Belgian chocolatiers it is one of the high points in the chocolate calendar, just behind Easter and Christmas.
One of life's cruel ironies is that Valentine's Day should fall a mere six weeks into my post-festive diet. Nary a Godiva praline will sully my fridge this year. I warned Bert. Unfortunately, being German, he tends to take things a bit too literally. He gave me a new set of go-faster stripes and a bulk pack of low-fat yoghurt. Wie romantisch.
For those of you who don't have a liturgical calendar to hand, may I take this occasion to remind you that Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is 11 days away, so if you did get chocolates for Valentine's Day, eat them now or be consigned to the fires of eternal damnation.I will be giving up low-fat yoghurt for Lent.
I must admit to a few lapses on the chocolate front, but have not binged since the beginning of the year. And, readers, I joined a gym! A proper one, with tellies and everything.I must say keep-fit has changed a bit since I last donned a pair of plimsolls. No piano or vaulting horse. It's all electronic contraptions and swipe cards. I was a little afraid that I would be upstaged by ice-blonde Ukrainian supermodels in sweatbands and lycra, balancing their Evian bottles on their finely-chiselled buttocks. But fortunately this is Belgium, not the Cote d'Azur. My fellow fatfighters are a motley crew of lumpen and lumpy flaxen-haired and ruddy-cheeked Flemish office workers in tracky bottoms, with a faint smattering of sleek and gleaming Africans in singlets and running shorts doing a steady 30 mph on the treadmill and not even breaking sweat, to give us something to aim for. I try to position myself on a machine just behind the shiny black ones, purely for the view. Of the telly, I mean.
Of course, just because one is working out at the gym doesn't mean one should wear one's old gardening trousers. I had to actually go and buy a pair of trainers, since I don't go in much for "leezhure wear" as the Americans call it. Tracksuits are just pyjamas for going to the shops in. Personally I favour a more track-and-field look when I am on the treadmill. FloJo is my inspiration. Even when you're glowing with effort, girls, you should try to look elegant. An extra couche of Estee Lauder Maximum Cover before going into the gym will make sure you avoid that just-boiled lobster look.
I got a free hour with a personal trainer, a slim young man with eyelashes to die for but very poor customer skills, who only managed to look interested at the point where I was supposed to sign up for his services for an extra monthly fee, so I am muddling along on my own. I tried a group session, which was disastrous - wearing varifocals, I couldn't see the instructors through my legs, they were going much too fast for me to keep up with the movements, and I kept getting vertigo and having to stop. It must have looked like an sketch by French and Saunders. I decided group exercise is not for me.
I must confess to a dirty little secret. I have a weakness for the smell of a sweaty male armpit. You can keep your endorphins. The pheromones wafting along from the guy on the next machine keep me on a "natural high".
I am taking it very easy to start with. I don't want to keel over with a heart attack. I set the treadmill to the lowest setting, "sitting down". Only when I feel I am ready to move up a notch will I progress to "shuffle to bathroom", then "aimless meander to the end of the garden with occasional stops to smell the flowers", before working my way up to "leisurely stroll to the cake shop". I am preparing to feel the burn.
Meanwhile, I would recommend Mr Bean's workout routine for the faint-hearted.
