slouching towards sunstone 
By Saskia Little-Brown

In which a reluctant, exercise - averse fifty something learns – we hope – the joys of fitness...

I missed New Year’s Eve. Well, I missed the bit about new year’s resolutions, mostly because I was deep into a delicious claret and couldn’t think straight, but partly because I’d never seen the point. Then a birthday celebration (an ominously high-end one of mine) and a dodgy knee and opting not to run for the bus gave me pause. My biggest workout involved parking a car without the help of powersteering. (Given that it’s a Skoda, that does burn up quite a few calories, actually.) But I had been a stranger to exertion of any sort for so long, an uberslob: the words life and style, in my dictionary, sat more comfortably alongside sofa and sauvignon blanc.

Was it time for a re-think? Should I let health and fitness into my life? Could I embrace exercise? Did I in fact have a clue what that might involve? (In answer to the last question, I had a fair idea that embarrassment and shame – and possibly personal injury – might well come into it, before things improved.)

Across the common, rumour had it, was an establishment that might help me regain some of the youthful vigour I think I once had. It would restore my fitness, my muscle tone, my cardio-vascular whatsits. It would give me new self-respect, and possibly improve my chances of ever again getting into a size 10. This temple to health and well-being also offered compensatory pampering – and exercises for people on the wrong side of fifty.

I was assured by those who know that they might – even – be able to help unreconstructed slobs such as myself. Was gain possible without pain, I whimpered?
In an uncharacteristic fit of steely resolve, I made a First of March resolution – better late than never, I reasoned. The health club it would be.

Of course, I haven’t quite got round to joining yet – but watch out for next issue’s thrilling account of how I actually picked up the phone (well that’s exercise, isn’t it?) and asked about membership...