It’s life at the gym, but not as we know it

PICTURE this. The changing rooms in a health club. Two ladies in expensive tennis gear, lightly sweating, zipping their racquets away. One is saying to the other: “I’m incandescent. He made an appointment with the builder to come at nine on Monday to redo the conservatory. He KNOWS I play tennis on Monday.”

Her companion, face flawlessly Restylaned, body perfect from all the tennis, nods grimly. “Oh I know. We just had ours done. Total unending nightmare.”

What, like Syria? Never mind. Walk to the lounge where everyone is having a post-exercise snack. It’s very busy because it’s January and everyone is still buying into their New Year’s resolutions; the personal trainers are stalking around like cats let loose in a canary shop. Canaries who believe themselves to be fat, lumpy, imperfect, whatever — the personal trainers don’t care.