Gyms, eh?
I didn't mind the gym too much.

The huge mound of cars outside all queuing (or, on more interesting days, fighting) for the five parking spaces right outside the front door was more amusing and dismaying. The primpers and preeners were more tragic than annoying. I could even cope with the weird people who seem to do an entire sixty-minute workout on one of the machines I wanted to use as part of my routine.

What got me was the changing room.

Or more accurately, the changing room predators.

Picture the scene. You've gone to the gym when it's nice and quiet. The changing room is almost empty, plenty of space for anyone who wants to change in it. So you wander in, and use whatever combination of randomness, numerology or eastern interior management arts you like to pick a locker and bench.

It was almost guaranteed that, just at the point you'd got your shirt and tie off, the fattest, ugliest and SWEATIEST middle-aged man you'd ever seen in your life would walk into that near-empty changing room and decide, that of all the wonderfully empty places to change that it offered, the place he wanted was the one right next to you.

Having already picked a locker, and thinking that huffily grabbing your stuff and walking across the changing room to another bench would look a bit - well - odd, you sort of shuffle to one side, hoping the man with the world's worst grasp of personal hygeine (and personal space, for that matter) will get the point.

This is the point at which his friend, or associate, or lover, or whatever, will decide to arrive, and the place *he* would like to change is right on the other side of you. In this empty changing room.

It's said that birds of a feather flock together, and indeed, the sweatiest man in the world's friend is the second sweatiest man in the world.

So imagine the situation. You've got about as much personal space as you'd get at rush hour on the Northern Line. You're between the world's sweatiest, ugliest, fattest middle-aged men.

And then they start stripping off.

...

I like the idea of keeping fit, but I'd rather not choose between having to change before going then have to get home before I can have a shower, or being traumatised twice every visit.
(Timberwolf, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 22:12, 1 reply)

right

everybody get into this post right now and get your kit off and stare at timberwolf... that's it, the fattier, sweatier and closier the betterier... he fuckin loves it he does...
(The Cats Twat, Mon 13 Jul 2009, 11:38, closed)