The mad lad at the gym

There's a couple of characters that go to my gym that completely crack me up, but one in particular completely takes the biscuit. Actually, I'd say he completely takes quite a few biscuits judging by the pork on him but that's besides the point.

He's 50-odd (very odd) I reckon, balding with long straggly hair at various locations around his head, a little bit short and tubby. He was there the other night, wearing his headband and droopy shorts and absolutely doing his thang. This amounts to lazy pootling around on various machines while delivering passionate renditions of soft rock classics like 'Fool for Your Lovin' no More', 'Livin' on a prayer' and his latest hit, 'Rockin' all over the World.' There's definitely some sort of air-guitar hero thing going on and in fact, I think he refuses to sing any song that doesn't have a verb somewhere in the title with a 'g' missing at the end. All rock gods are into droppin' their gees man.

So there he is throwing the head back and screeching about how we gotta hold on to what we've got (cos' it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not), and all the while he's getting funny looks from the corners of peoples' eyes and there's a few titters down the back and stuff. He remains supremely oblivious to the lot as he digs deep and lets us know that he la la la likes it, la la la here we go-oh! rockin' all over the world. You get the picture. Eventually though he runs out of breath - not from the exercise, it's the high notes that kill him - and so he wanders off and sits down and reads a magazine for a while.

He is, however, merely girding his loins for the main part of his session. His self-designed weights and stretching programme is a heady mix of step aerobics, Freddie Mercury's stage routine, a few of the stunts off Charlie's Angels, choreography from Grease and curiously, impressions of Wonder Woman. I'm not messing here, you should see this guy. He'll grab a small dumbell and stand there throwing it from one hand to the other for about two minutes like he's kneading dough for a pizza. Then he'll walk towards one wall and sprint backwards - yes, backwards - to the other wall, looking almost rapidly over either shoulder to make sure nobody is in his way.
Then he starts charging about with his head down like a bull before stopping without warning and stretching his arms to the heavens, holding the pose for about ten seconds. Like Andy Dufresne outside Shawshank. Just when everyone thinks it can't get any more surreal, he then stands in front of a bench, adjusts it to waist height and starts roundhouse kicking over and back like he's Chuck Norris on speed. This goes on for about five minutes before he flops face down and panting on the bench with his arms and legs dangling over the side like a limp cloth. And I swear to Jesus he doesn't move for about ten minutes and sometimes people have to go over and ask is he alright.

He'll then finish off with his great compendium mish-mash where he combines every piece of physical movement ever known to man and brings all the disparate strands together in a great orchestra of absolute nonsense. He'll begin by using floor tiles to measure out a square and starts hopping from one corner to the other and stretching his arms above his head, puffing his cheeks and making little 'Huu-awww' noises as he goes. Then he'll pirouette for no given reason and start trying to touch his toes, before straightening up for a bit of shadow boxing and then dropping to the floor for three press ups. Up he'll get again for some jogging on the spot and then he starts windmilling like crazy and once he did a goal celebration that I last saw at World Cup in Mexico 1986, no shit. Finally he'll finish off with some, oddly enough, warm-up exercises and one of his favourites is to crouch on the floor in a ball and slowly rise to a standing position while extending all his limbs as far as he can.

I'm almost certain that this is the 'Acorn becomes the Oak' game that we used to do at Playschool in 1980. God help us all.