“Come on, you could do with some exercise! You’re not getting any younger.”

“Exercise? I’ll have you know that, as a schoolboy, I used to take my sport very seriously. I once played at Highbury^**, you know.”

“That was thirty years ago, Paul. Look, all I’m saying is… try a session at the gym with me. Just the once, see how you get on.”

“Twenty-five”, snapped Paul.

It took a while, but Paul eventually came around. For the visit, he tried to look as sporty as he could – some jogging pants and trainers, that he had previously only worn indoors.

…

“Okay, how do you want to do this? Here are the weights, the treadmills are over along that wall… Shall we just split – I can do my workout and you can explore?”

Paul agreed. “Right, then”, said Anna, “I’ll start on the treadmill and I’ll come back and find you in a short while.”

Paul found the exercise bikes, perched himself on one, and started pedalling. He looked up at the clock – twenty past.

He pedalled strenuously, but just could not get comfy in the saddle. “Just a few more minutes”, he told himself. Somebody walked past carrying a cup of water. “Hmmm… that looks good”, he thought. “I’ll just do this for a few more minutes…”. He counted to 100 – that was close enough – then abandoned the bike and found the drinks fountain.

He looked around the gym. With mirrors on every wall, it was hard to tell real from reflection. Refreshed, he spotted a rowing machine. “Why not?”, he thought, as he headed over. He tried the machine out – “pah, this was easy, a simple flywheel” – as he started to row. Gaining confidence, Paul decided that this was too straightforward, and looked around for other challenges that the gym had to offer.

He was so busy looking at the different machines, he did not think to look at the clock, which would have said twenty-five-to. All these contraptions were strength-building somehow, but god knows how…

Having seen one of the machines in use, he decided to try that first. Simple. Just pushing weights up with his leg. Ah, okay, must be to strengthen his thigh. He pushed. “Bloody hell, that was tough” – it had been set by the previous user. He reduced the weight and pushed more comfortably. Oh, yes, he could do this, no worries.

Appetite whetted, Paul sought another machine. Looks like that was for arms – so he worked on his biceps. On a roll, Paul then found machines for his triceps, quads, and abs. Then, he had the idea to see how Anna was doing. When he spotted her, she was still on that same treadmill she’d started on. As he wandered towards her, he could see that she was pushing herself. “Jeez, doesn’t she feel dizzy?”, he muttered.

Anna saw him in the mirror and stopped. She removed her ear buds and breathlessly said, “Hi, hun. I’m just gonna do another twenty minutes on here, then some weights, then I’ll be with you. I’ll just do a quick one, today.”

Involuntarily, Paul looked up at the clock. It was a quarter-to. Twenty minutes? Weights? Quick?

“Fucking hell, I’m bored”, thought Paul.

* – One of the tenets of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity is that time moves at different speeds for different observers.

** – Highbury used to be the 50,000-capacity stadium of the UK soccer team, Arsenal.

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I wrote backgrounds to these characters in the following series of posts: