It's been a good day.
Back to school, starting in the heaving staffroom before transferring to the canteen for coffee and hot croissants. The croissants arrived fashionably late, just as the babble of dozens of catch-up conversations was reaching the point where no-one could actually hear what anyone else was saying. Relief all round, and yes, I had two soft and steamy zaatar croissants - this was breakfast after all, since I couldn't face food when the alarm went off at seven. Next week it will be going off at six, so I've got a week to get my act together. Urk.
Meetings, timetables, all the usual first day stuff. Heavy on the admin, but that's part of what what this week is for, so I have no complaints. I stayed a couple of hours extra to tie in with Habibi driving back from a meeting. My husband looks after me. He was well impressed with the wild new colours in our corridor. The Arts building is the most vivid I've seen so far - citrus green walls with lilac doors and purple door-frames. We grown-ups are not quite sure about this yet, but the kids are going to love it. I've heard that the Maths & Science corridors are something to behold, but I'm saving them as a pick-me-up for later in the week, when I've had one meeting too many. I shall let you know.
So what did I do when I got home? The usual. Crashed on the sofa for an hour or so, undisturbed by Habibi working on. He's resigned to this by now. When we were young and beautiful and falling in loooooooove, I used to get to his place at the end of a day and crash out in any available space. He called me 'the incredible sleeping woman' and has photos to prove his point. At least it also confirmed that sometimes I do go quiet, and a man needs to know that about the woman in his life. Oh okay! - this man, this woman....
But what can I do? I never sleep properly the night before we go back; I'm too full of anticipation. Last night was so hopeless that I got up some time after two, made myself a sandwich and a cup of tea, and watched 'Surviving Picasso' on ONE. Natascha McElhone and Anthony Hopkins. That woman is ravishing.
I have a theory that great artists are more likely than those of us in the middle of the graph to be bloody-minded, self-absorbed gits, just because they only perceive normal stuff like food, sleep, relationships and personal hygiene as a waste of precious time, and of hard-earned cash that ought to be be spent on the really important stuff like oil paints, manuscript paper and The Violin. Or because the unsung genius goes gaga from malnutrition (ok, drink!) while the critics' darling starts believing his own publicity. Picasso appears to have matched at least some of that particular sweeping generalisation!
(I think I may have said this before. If so, I promise not to say it again.)
So what on earth am I blogging after midnight for again? Well I've been to the gym again, haven't I? Sooooo I am floating along on my own salsa-induced endorphin cushion, and good for another half hour and a glass of red wine. (You have to get your anti-oxidants, don't you?)
I went down yesterday for the first time since June, and did a circuit that took in the treadmill and the cross-trainer (I still don't get it, but at least I don't fall off anymore.) plus assorted instruments of sit-down designer-torture. Great! After an hour and a half, I was thinking about heading home when they announced a Bodybalance class in half an hour. Ooh yeah. I liiiiike the gym. (And toniiiiiiiiight I liiiiiiiike playing with vooooooooooooowels. Don't worry. It will pass.)
And on the way out I picked up the new timetable, and saw that Salsa was due to start tonight. Yay! A very dear and vivacious friend has been doing salsa for a couple of years now, and loves it. I love the idea, but not enough to cross town around bedtime(!)
SO..... Salsa at 8.30 tonight, with Seif: an engaging teacher who got all umpty-twelve of us stepping and swaying through the basic forward, back and side movements, right and left turns, and fifth position (I've just cut my attempt to explain fifth - easier just to do it.), plus a good demo from a couple who teach elsewhere. I have to say, though, that I found the woman very mechanical.
(Tangent Alert) I think some dancers pay a price for years of ballet training through the grade exams. I've known devoted dancers who work so hard at their technique, that they are never fully 'there' in the simple joy of dancing. Tthe conscious exercising of technique, the demonstration of a 'routine', always shows. Of course, for others, graded classes and exams represent those hours when they are most supremely alive, a framework that enables them to dance, and dance their whole lives. (Have you seen Billy Elliott? Think of his audition, when he has to articulate what dance means to him. There.) Systems and individuals.
Still, to return to the demonstration dance, a bunch of strangers in sweats and trainers, in a brightly lit studio that has just emptied of dozens of sweaty Bodypumpers is hardly the ultimate 'invitation to the dance'. It's hardly surprising if the 'moment' you're in is that one an hour hence, when you're all meeting for a drink and a laugh after class. Still, these guys showed us some serious moves. Fun!
I had a really good time wiggling my ample tush in a humanely baggy teeshirt, and as long as I didn't pay too much attention to that woman in the mirror (who follows me into lifts and bathrooms all over Dubai - no consideration) I was completely in my dancing moment!
Bonus (FYI Mme. Cyn) Reggie was there, looking good, too! Of course, he always did...
Reggie played the alternative hero in a panto I wrote and directed for Dubai Drama Group some five years ago. In my version it was a WWF wrestler who woke Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, though he was much more interested in the pantomime dame, Signora Peperoni, than in some well-preserved nymphette. (It's got my prints all over it, hasn't it?) Anyway, Reggie was absolutely fab as
the Monarch of the Mat,
the Khan of the Canvas,
the Sultan of Slam,
Montezumaaaaaaahhh!
(cue song)
He's got the muscles of the desert puma.
We love the big guy. Give him a satsuma!
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, Montezuma!
I shall be emailing cyber-lollies to anyone who can Name That Tune.
(Not you Mme. Cyn! Though you will always be The Most Fabulous Fairy of Them All.)
G'night!
Bloody hell, it's 1.27! Crepe.Crepe.Crepe!
Plenty of link opportunities on this one, but you know about Billy Elliott, Salsa and Fitness First. If you don't know about Dubai Drama Group, they're doing one of my favourite farces, Run For Your Wife, at Dubai Community Theatre, very soon. I'll check and get back to you. (Mme Cyn? Grumpy Old Goat? Adventures in Dubai? Any other thespians in the know? When are DDG doing Run For Your Wife?)
Showing posts with label fitness/aptitud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fitness/aptitud. Show all posts
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Woowoo!
WooooooooooWOO! Feeling great here. Crawled off to the gym for a 5.15 Body Balance class, feeling wasted. It is now 6.36 and I feel fab! Still got no abs nor much in the way of back muscles, and everything that's supposed to flex only does so under protest, but hubba-hubba-hubba when it's all over I'm looser, and riding a wave of endorphins. And I've got to be at least two inches taller. Back tomorrow for the 6.15. Meanwhile, Habibi has made spaghetti bolognese (which he does supremely well, and if you're reading this, Habibibaba, I'm sorry you missed it....). He does look after me.
By the way, I did the Body Jam class yesterday (also went on the treadmill and the cross-trainer without falling off!). It was good in a one-day-I'm-gonna-be-able-to-do-this-if-I-don't-die-first sort of way. Also the other three players were all 16 and I'm....... not.
If you've seen Save the Last Dance where Sean Patrick Thomas teaches Julia Stiles hip-hop, you may remember how gawky and out of it she was to start with. I've got her beat! Biiiiiiig time. Watching Flashdance tonight for a laugh. There's something familiar about the flying sw - um - perspiration. (Wooowooo!)
By the way, I did the Body Jam class yesterday (also went on the treadmill and the cross-trainer without falling off!). It was good in a one-day-I'm-gonna-be-able-to-do-this-if-I-don't-die-first sort of way. Also the other three players were all 16 and I'm....... not.
If you've seen Save the Last Dance where Sean Patrick Thomas teaches Julia Stiles hip-hop, you may remember how gawky and out of it she was to start with. I've got her beat! Biiiiiiig time. Watching Flashdance tonight for a laugh. There's something familiar about the flying sw - um - perspiration. (Wooowooo!)
Friday, April 28, 2006
Friday Hedonist
One of the chief pleasures of Fridays is waking at my normal Pavlovian hour, but on my terms.
During the week I often stir restively in the small hours, surfacing and resurfacing at 3.30, 4.10, 5.40: the side effect of too much mental activity and hardly any physical activity. At 6 o’clock I am asleep, body and psyche utterly defenceless against the deceptively understated bibibibibiiiip bibibibibiiip of the alarm clock. Aural acupuncture.
I extend a claw to switch the damn thing off, and having decided, against the evidence, that I am not in fact dead and beginning eternity in one of the less spectacular circles of hell, emerge from my pit with all the zest for life of a crone in a Russian fairy tale. My centre of gravity is somewhere around the soles of my feet, and I’ve got about as much vertical hold as a stack of paint cans in a Laurel & Hardy movie. Body buckling under the unbearable heaviness of being, I shuffle towards the kitchen.
On Fridays I wake to the silence where the alarm clock isn’t. Ah. Bliss. A/C hums. Habibi snores. Birds twitter. (Saw Failure to Launch yesterday, arf arf. Go see.) I don’t move, savouring the feeling of spine stretched on cotton sheets and firm wide mattress, appreciative of sunlight filtering through curtains and closed eyelids, waiting to see if I feel like getting up or going back to sleep.
Sometimes I stay put just for the pleasure of being horizontal, cocooned, motionless except for the slow rise and fall of my chest as I breathe (always reassuring) letting thoughts drift until sleep washes over and I sink in quiet rapture.
If I decide I want to be up, then I might slither sideways in a satisfyingly silly private game of escaping unnoticed by mattress or duvet. Or just get up and go see what the day looks like. Sometimes I whip the duvet to one side and feel the cool air replacing the warm over me, give it half a minute – there’s no rush after all – and pootle off in search of tea to the rhythm of whatever happens to be playing in my head.
I think it’s a major misconception that music is something we appreciate exclusively through our ears – music is how we harness energy and spirit; soar, pivot, tumble and sweep onward inside without necessarily moving, at least on the outside; how we express what is otherwise inexpressible in all of us, and share the feelings and experiences of others. It’s right up there with love, food, drink and shelter as a fundamental human necessity.
How marvellous it is that there are people with extraordinary gifts as singers, musicians, composers and dancers; and a recording industry that enables us to see and hear over and over again artists we might never see live. But at the same time, the truly gifted only have in abundance what the rest of us have in moderation. We need to make music too, all of us, and if we’re too inhibited to dance, wiggle, sing, hum, whistle, snap our fingers, tap our feet, at least nod our heads for heaven’s sake, then something vital has been suppressed.
Bring on the live bands of local kids, and the folk clubs, the singalongs, the choirs, the school orchestras, the amateur operatics, the karaoke, the ceilidhs, the barndances and the dance classes. Bring on the superstar in the shower! Bring on the boogie-woogie bed-maker and sweeper-upper!
(I generally do housework while jigging along to Shania Twain, adding harmonies when the mood takes me, because that's where the fun lies, and also because it means that only a quarter of my brain has to engage with the tedious inevitability of dust everywhere - especially after this week's shamals blew half the desert into our apartment. The Empty Quarter must be very empty indeed today. (OK I exaggerate.) Habibi is very brave about the harmonies, which of course drown out the melody and the rest of the arrangement. It was very good of Habibibaba to leave his good headphones behind when he left home.)
OK, so it’s Friday morning, I’m out of bed, with a tune in my head, and the kettle’s over there. I think that different rhythms pour energy into different parts of the body – and in many different ways! Some the shoulders and upper chest (Peter Gabriel’s Salisbury Hill,Chopin’s sorry, Debussy's Clair de Lune - Thanks Pater!, or a quickstep) others the hips (rumba, reggae, rock’n’roll) others the head - both senses and intellect – (Mozart voice, clarinet, strings – you name it). So while I’m not dancing down the hall (It’s still only just gone 6 a.m. remember.) I am lifted and propelled without any real effort on my part – a serious improvement on Wednesday at this hour.
And later, after I’ve had my tea, and an hour or so on the sofa with my book, or BBC World, or some film I’ve caught the latter half of, I may decide to go back to bed. Just for the hell of it.
Today of course, I’ve been writing this, and now I’m taking the temple of my soul to the gym. Once again, it’s been over a week because of work and weariness, so I’m stiff, but I love doing it, I love the steam room afterwards, and weekdays at 6 a.m. are much better when I’ve been to the gym the day before. Begone ancient crone!
During the week I often stir restively in the small hours, surfacing and resurfacing at 3.30, 4.10, 5.40: the side effect of too much mental activity and hardly any physical activity. At 6 o’clock I am asleep, body and psyche utterly defenceless against the deceptively understated bibibibibiiiip bibibibibiiip of the alarm clock. Aural acupuncture.
I extend a claw to switch the damn thing off, and having decided, against the evidence, that I am not in fact dead and beginning eternity in one of the less spectacular circles of hell, emerge from my pit with all the zest for life of a crone in a Russian fairy tale. My centre of gravity is somewhere around the soles of my feet, and I’ve got about as much vertical hold as a stack of paint cans in a Laurel & Hardy movie. Body buckling under the unbearable heaviness of being, I shuffle towards the kitchen.
On Fridays I wake to the silence where the alarm clock isn’t. Ah. Bliss. A/C hums. Habibi snores. Birds twitter. (Saw Failure to Launch yesterday, arf arf. Go see.) I don’t move, savouring the feeling of spine stretched on cotton sheets and firm wide mattress, appreciative of sunlight filtering through curtains and closed eyelids, waiting to see if I feel like getting up or going back to sleep.
Sometimes I stay put just for the pleasure of being horizontal, cocooned, motionless except for the slow rise and fall of my chest as I breathe (always reassuring) letting thoughts drift until sleep washes over and I sink in quiet rapture.
If I decide I want to be up, then I might slither sideways in a satisfyingly silly private game of escaping unnoticed by mattress or duvet. Or just get up and go see what the day looks like. Sometimes I whip the duvet to one side and feel the cool air replacing the warm over me, give it half a minute – there’s no rush after all – and pootle off in search of tea to the rhythm of whatever happens to be playing in my head.
I think it’s a major misconception that music is something we appreciate exclusively through our ears – music is how we harness energy and spirit; soar, pivot, tumble and sweep onward inside without necessarily moving, at least on the outside; how we express what is otherwise inexpressible in all of us, and share the feelings and experiences of others. It’s right up there with love, food, drink and shelter as a fundamental human necessity.
How marvellous it is that there are people with extraordinary gifts as singers, musicians, composers and dancers; and a recording industry that enables us to see and hear over and over again artists we might never see live. But at the same time, the truly gifted only have in abundance what the rest of us have in moderation. We need to make music too, all of us, and if we’re too inhibited to dance, wiggle, sing, hum, whistle, snap our fingers, tap our feet, at least nod our heads for heaven’s sake, then something vital has been suppressed.
Bring on the live bands of local kids, and the folk clubs, the singalongs, the choirs, the school orchestras, the amateur operatics, the karaoke, the ceilidhs, the barndances and the dance classes. Bring on the superstar in the shower! Bring on the boogie-woogie bed-maker and sweeper-upper!
(I generally do housework while jigging along to Shania Twain, adding harmonies when the mood takes me, because that's where the fun lies, and also because it means that only a quarter of my brain has to engage with the tedious inevitability of dust everywhere - especially after this week's shamals blew half the desert into our apartment. The Empty Quarter must be very empty indeed today. (OK I exaggerate.) Habibi is very brave about the harmonies, which of course drown out the melody and the rest of the arrangement. It was very good of Habibibaba to leave his good headphones behind when he left home.)
OK, so it’s Friday morning, I’m out of bed, with a tune in my head, and the kettle’s over there. I think that different rhythms pour energy into different parts of the body – and in many different ways! Some the shoulders and upper chest (Peter Gabriel’s Salisbury Hill,
And later, after I’ve had my tea, and an hour or so on the sofa with my book, or BBC World, or some film I’ve caught the latter half of, I may decide to go back to bed. Just for the hell of it.
Today of course, I’ve been writing this, and now I’m taking the temple of my soul to the gym. Once again, it’s been over a week because of work and weariness, so I’m stiff, but I love doing it, I love the steam room afterwards, and weekdays at 6 a.m. are much better when I’ve been to the gym the day before. Begone ancient crone!
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
I'm on the Ride to Nowhere
Yesterday I did two things I knew I’d regret. Now I’m regretting them. In the morning I went to my first exercise bike class, and last night I stayed up til 4 a.m. reading Ayalguita’s Cloud from start to finish and uploading photos. So here I am, with calf muscles that whimper if I try to get my heels within two inches of the floor, and the dry eyes and fuzzy head of a post-binge addict. I had fun yesterday!
Actually, I didn’t get on with the bike class at all. When Fitness First opened, I checked out all the gear and facilities, did a private Snoopy Spring Dance of delight, and made a mental list of things to do now, in due course, and absolutely uh-uh, never, no way. The weights and the bike room were the only things on the no way list: the weights because I’m only 5’ 2” (1.57m) and broad shouldered, and I want to emerge from my homage to M. Michelin as a trim little eggtimer (Hourglasses are taller.) not a caricature of an 1970s East German shot-putter; and the bike room because it’s dark, definitely not equipped with British Personal Space in mind, and the bikes are bolted to the floor. Now to me, a bike ride is a practical method for getting from A to B and/or a full-on one-woman sensory buzz - energetic yes, sweaty, probably, and sometimes, when you’re cold, wet, tired, and grimly grinding up a gradient that only a sissy would get off and push up, about as much fun as tooth-ache. But otherwise: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (No, I haven’t had a bike in years, and no, I don’t think I have the nerve or immune system to join the eco-warriors snorting diesel fumes in rush-hour traffic the world over.) What a bike ride isn’t, is a frenzied, disco-driven, tight-pack simulation of a Tour de France night stage. Nooooooooo!
So that was that, no problem, til I met someone who loved the bike room, found the darkness comforting in her pre-Olympian form, loved the drive and variety of a typical session and knew a fantastic – gasp - cardio-vascular – pant - work-out when she – gasp-pant-gasp – got one.
Well ok – game if not exactly enthusiastic, I gave it a shot.
Short answer: nope. Not for me.
I should have known that as the woman who fell off the cross-trainer when little brother took her to his gym in England, and who fell off the treadmill in her first week at FF (Well of course it’s possible – you never heard of gravity?) that anything involving maintaining a rhythm on a machine, in the dark, with my toes strapped to the pedal, was going to end in tears. Well, almost. The instructor was good (cute, too…) and the woman next to me very kind to a nervous newbie baffled by adjustable handlebars, seat and shaft. For a while there, I was doing it. But then I had to 1) use my brain (in the sweaty, pounding, disco dark) and 2) go with the flow. Er… what?
After half an hour, every instinct was flashing red. Think? Adjust resistance? Stand up? Sit down? At this speed? With my toes in a doodad? Remember, disbelieving reader, to a woman who can fall off a cross-trainer and a treadmill, being thrown by an exercise bike is merely the logical next step. Logic + disco-darkness + doodads = escalating anxiety = EXIT PLAN.
And so, 30 minutes into the class, and with the speakers blasting “It’s time to stop.” (Maybe I’m not the first….) I dismounted, nodded sheepishly at the instructor, and tottered out of there.
The rest of the class kept pounding away for another half-hour, and emerged glowing, just as I do from Body Balance (Pilates-meets-Tai Chi-meets-Yoga) Body Jam (Hip-hop-meets-Jazz-meets-Latin-meets-Oooooh allsorts!) and using the machines. It has to be said that I’m not much good at them either, yet, but I really enjoy them, and I feel so much better on a day-to-day basis - looser, more upright, more co-ordinated - that stronger and trimmer and better balanced has to be out there somewhere. Each to her own!
Anyway, Habibi has got off the Internet and gone for a Brisk Walk, so I’m going to post this, and hobble off for a long bath full of Muscle Soak Radox. Nnnnnnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhhh………
And I’m going to take down the Palestinian dress pics I was struggling with last night, and have another go later, because I think I might have got the hang of it now. Confidence – the triumph of optimism over experience. There are some advantages to a flat learning curve.
Actually, I didn’t get on with the bike class at all. When Fitness First opened, I checked out all the gear and facilities, did a private Snoopy Spring Dance of delight, and made a mental list of things to do now, in due course, and absolutely uh-uh, never, no way. The weights and the bike room were the only things on the no way list: the weights because I’m only 5’ 2” (1.57m) and broad shouldered, and I want to emerge from my homage to M. Michelin as a trim little eggtimer (Hourglasses are taller.) not a caricature of an 1970s East German shot-putter; and the bike room because it’s dark, definitely not equipped with British Personal Space in mind, and the bikes are bolted to the floor. Now to me, a bike ride is a practical method for getting from A to B and/or a full-on one-woman sensory buzz - energetic yes, sweaty, probably, and sometimes, when you’re cold, wet, tired, and grimly grinding up a gradient that only a sissy would get off and push up, about as much fun as tooth-ache. But otherwise: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (No, I haven’t had a bike in years, and no, I don’t think I have the nerve or immune system to join the eco-warriors snorting diesel fumes in rush-hour traffic the world over.) What a bike ride isn’t, is a frenzied, disco-driven, tight-pack simulation of a Tour de France night stage. Nooooooooo!
So that was that, no problem, til I met someone who loved the bike room, found the darkness comforting in her pre-Olympian form, loved the drive and variety of a typical session and knew a fantastic – gasp - cardio-vascular – pant - work-out when she – gasp-pant-gasp – got one.
Well ok – game if not exactly enthusiastic, I gave it a shot.
Short answer: nope. Not for me.
I should have known that as the woman who fell off the cross-trainer when little brother took her to his gym in England, and who fell off the treadmill in her first week at FF (Well of course it’s possible – you never heard of gravity?) that anything involving maintaining a rhythm on a machine, in the dark, with my toes strapped to the pedal, was going to end in tears. Well, almost. The instructor was good (cute, too…) and the woman next to me very kind to a nervous newbie baffled by adjustable handlebars, seat and shaft. For a while there, I was doing it. But then I had to 1) use my brain (in the sweaty, pounding, disco dark) and 2) go with the flow. Er… what?
After half an hour, every instinct was flashing red. Think? Adjust resistance? Stand up? Sit down? At this speed? With my toes in a doodad? Remember, disbelieving reader, to a woman who can fall off a cross-trainer and a treadmill, being thrown by an exercise bike is merely the logical next step. Logic + disco-darkness + doodads = escalating anxiety = EXIT PLAN.
And so, 30 minutes into the class, and with the speakers blasting “It’s time to stop.” (Maybe I’m not the first….) I dismounted, nodded sheepishly at the instructor, and tottered out of there.
The rest of the class kept pounding away for another half-hour, and emerged glowing, just as I do from Body Balance (Pilates-meets-Tai Chi-meets-Yoga) Body Jam (Hip-hop-meets-Jazz-meets-Latin-meets-Oooooh allsorts!) and using the machines. It has to be said that I’m not much good at them either, yet, but I really enjoy them, and I feel so much better on a day-to-day basis - looser, more upright, more co-ordinated - that stronger and trimmer and better balanced has to be out there somewhere. Each to her own!
Anyway, Habibi has got off the Internet and gone for a Brisk Walk, so I’m going to post this, and hobble off for a long bath full of Muscle Soak Radox. Nnnnnnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhhh………
And I’m going to take down the Palestinian dress pics I was struggling with last night, and have another go later, because I think I might have got the hang of it now. Confidence – the triumph of optimism over experience. There are some advantages to a flat learning curve.
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