Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir)

by Spalding, Nick

  It’s a pretty good subject to tackle, as we’re all guilty of doing it at one time or another.

  I’ve already answered the question of whether I’m a good father to the best of my ability - it’s up to you to decide if I did it well or not - but there are plenty more questions of its type rolling around my head, creating a dreadful racket.

  Here’s a few examples:

  Am I nice?

  Am I attractive?

  Am I a good writer?

  Am I respected by my peers?

  Am I good in bed?

  Am I thinking too much?

  Answers on a back of a postcard, please.

  As you can never really arrive at conclusive answers to these questions - with maybe the exception of the last one - it’s a more valid use of your time to wonder why you ask them in the first place.

  It’s back to that human nature thing, isn’t it?

  We’re all cursed with questioning our lot in life and how we could make it better: How we could be better looking, better dressed and more sophisticated at cocktail parties - instead of nibbling on a few dry canapés, getting blitzed and spending the entire evening talking to a pot plant.

  Darwinian followers will stroke their beards and say its part of survival of the fittest, which drives the engine of human achievement - and they may well be right.

  If we’re analysing our faults and trying to do something about fixing them, then we’re trying to lift ourselves above those around us. Trying to reach the top of the tree where all the best bananas are, so to speak.

  I’d argue there’s more to it than that, though.

  Part of the reason we obsess about ourselves is because the world we live in makes us.

  Take a good look around next time you step out of the front door. Make a mental list of the amount of times you see something that preys on your self-esteem.

  Bet you get to at least fifty in a day.

  Here’s the most prevalent example:

  Am I attractive?

  Well… are you?

  Looking at advertising hoardings and magazines it would appear you’re not, actually - and neither am I.

  If we were, there wouldn’t be so many companies trying to sell us products that are meant improve our looks.

  There wouldn’t be as many posters featuring beautiful, air-brushed models, mugging away to the camera - convincing us that we just have to buy this new shampoo that makes your hair look like silk and feel stronger than steel.

  Having it smell like peach, persimmon or apple blossom appears to be a must too - though why anyone would want to walk around with a head smelling like a fruit basket is beyond me.

  We’re constantly bombarded with this kind of thing.

  Some of us try to ignore these messages and some embrace them whole-heartedly.

  Eventually though, pretty much everyone succumbs to the pressure of our peers and the advertising companies. We buy the products and read the lifestyle tips in the magazines, hoping they’ll make us better people.

  I’ve done it.

  I’ve bought the deodorant that’s supposed to make me a sex magnet. I’ve worn the clothes designed to make me look rich and successful. I’ve eaten the food meant to make me look fit and full of vitality.

  Yet for some reason, as I sit here, I’m not surrounded by super-models.

  Nor am I filthy rich.

  Could it just possibly be that these messages are – gasp! - wrong? That all the adverts and all the lifestyle gurus are comprehensively and utterly full of shit?

  There are no supermodels and no vast sums of money nearby, but I do have a slight paunch that will turn into an unsightly gut if I’m not careful.

  Strange...

  Could this be down to the fact that while half the consumer industry is telling us to buy products meant to make us look better and feel healthier - the other half are selling us stuff that makes us fat, unhealthy and unattractive again?

  Chocolate, fast food, cigarettes, booze, sweets - the list goes on and on.

  I smell a conspiracy!

  Is it any wonder most of us are confused, when we’re being bombarded with such conflicting ideologies?

  Buy this pizza and we’ll make you fat!

  Buy this ab-cruncher and we’ll make you thin!

  Hell, why not eat your pizza while using the ab-cruncher at the same time!

  You’ll achieve a Zen-like harmony between two states of being and will probably transcend to a higher level of existence. At that point they can sell religion to you as well!

  Good grief.

  How many times have you had the following experience?

  You’re doing your weekly shop and find yourself poised over the freezer cabinet trying to decide between the Good For You range of meals that you don’t really want, but will stop you turning into Jabba The Hutt - and the full fat Incredibly Bad For You range that tastes nice, but will pile on the calories.

  What an enormous ball ache.

  I tend to buy both in an agony of indecision, which is fast becoming a real strain on my wallet.

  I’ve even stood looking at food packets for the calorie content. I nearly started taking a calculator to the store with me, but as that would make me the world’s saddest twat, I left it at home - inside the diary I got for Christmas.

  Inevitably, I end up eating all the full fat stuff and the healthy food rots gently in the back of the cupboard, or enters its own private ice age in the freezer.

  I joined a gym last year - try not to look at my curved back and aforementioned gut, please. If you do, try to stifle the laughter, my ego can’t take it. I joined in January, in an attempt to keep a new year’s resolution for once in my life and lose a few pounds.

  The place was recommended to me by a sickeningly healthy friend, who assured me that their rates were cheap and they’d give me buns of steel in no time at all.

  Along I go, with my credit card held high, hoping for a better - and more muscular - future.

  The gym was a lovely place.

  Full of spangly, complicated looking work-out equipment, tanned and healthy staff, cheerful lighting and the positive atmosphere of a place built solely for the purpose of making bodies slimmer and bank accounts empty.

  There were motivational posters all over the walls, featuring superhuman young men and women in a variety of action poses on exercise equipment.

  Slogans were writ large across them, such as:

  ‘One day at a time = A better life!’

  ‘Change your style, Change your attitude, Change your future!’

  Frankly, it was the kind of propaganda that would have made Joseph Goebbels cry with delight.

  Happily, there wasn’t one up that said There’s No ‘I’ In Team! - otherwise my visit to the gym would have been very short-lived.

  Violent, but short-lived.

  Essentially, this gym was the kind of place that encouraged you to put in the effort and come back time and again to enjoy the thrill of healthy exercise.

  …I went three times.

  The first was a half an hour orientation evening, when I was completely baffled by everything the pretty, lycra-clad girl told me. I may have no problem using some electronic gadgets, but when it comes to exercise bicycles and rowing machines, I’m a Luddite of the highest order.

  She was quite patient with me, explaining what all the buttons and blinking lights did. I nodded my head and took in none of it.

  It didn’t help that she had a magnificent pair of breasts.

  If I’d had a calendar with those on, the car would never have got through its M.O.T.

  I went home that night with a feeling of trepidation about using any of the infernal machines, but was determined to see it through and achieve buns of steel as quickly as possible.

  Second time round I was on my own.

  The pretty girl who’d given me the grand tour was in the gym that night, but was far too caught up in a conversation with a tree-trunk of a man who looked like he was permanen
tly in the middle of a body building competition. His breasts were slightly bigger than hers.

  Having changed, I ventured into the exercise room in my brand new jogging pants and muscle vest. I only looked marginally ridiculous, and fitted in well with the rest of the spandex squad.

  The look was only ruined by the tatty trainers I had on my feet.

  I was willing to spend twenty quid in Marks and Sparks on my new found fitness hobby, but I didn’t fancy forking out eighty quid for a new pair of Reeboks.

  …this says a lot about my level of commitment.

  I’d also toyed with the idea of wearing a headband, but thought better of it.

  I started my workout gently with the treadmill.

  I can work a treadmill, no problem. The amount of buttons on the keypad may be high, but you can’t go far wrong with a machine that’s basically a glorified hamster wheel and only has three settings: slow, fast and heart attack inducing.

  Setting it on slow, I began to jog my way to a life without love handles.

  I was under the illusion that many unfit people have when they come to a place like this.

  Because I was in a proper gym, using proper gym equipment, the state of my unfitness would therefore be miraculously off-set by the professional atmosphere and technological wizardry at my disposal. I may smoke nearly twenty a day and think getting out of bed in the morning constitutes a sit-up, but all these lovely gadgets would compensate completely.

  And besides, I look like a fit person in my muscle shirt and joggers, so I should feel like one too!

  Here I was, paying out a couple of hundred quid for a year’s use of the facilities, so surely my body would respond to my over-whelming generosity toward it and raise its game a bit.

  Needless to say, this didn’t happen.

  After five minutes on the treadmill, I’m wheezing - and after fifteen I sound like a dying camel.

  This really wasn’t going well at all.

  People start to look round to see where all the noise is coming from, possibly expecting the gym to have suddenly filled with silent Bedouins, accompanying the camel that’s stumbled in from the Gobi desert.

  The sweat starts to run down my face in rivulets.

  My leg muscles are aching like mad.

  I should have stopped, I really should have. But by this time, I’m aware I’ve something of an audience watching - and pride takes over.

  Instead of getting off the treadmill and taking a much needed rest, I actually turn up the speed.

  ‘Hey everyone! I may look like I’m running closer and closer to death with every second that passes, but in actual fact, I’m just getting started! The laboured breathing is just a cunning ploy to make you think I don’t know what I’m doing! But I must, because I’ve just turned up the speed!’

  With the treadmill now on fast, my legs are pumping harder than they have in fifteen years.

  The look of agony on my face is palpable. It’s the grinning rictus of a man possessed by his own stupidity.

  I’m now wheezing like a camel in a gas-mask.

  My body starts to rebel and I begin to lose co-ordination in my arms and legs.

  I’m not so much running now as I am permanently falling forward.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the pretty gym girl calling the paramedics, showing a real talent for forward planning.

  Everyone else is starting to edge away from my wildly flailing body, so they’re outside the flight path when inertia finally catches up and sling-shots me off the treadmill into the nearest wall.

  I want to stop now, I really do. But my vision is blurred so much and my arms are so totally out of control that I’m unable to use the treadmill’s keypad to stop the thing.

  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as by now I haven’t got a clue how to work it. My brain ceased to function with any clarity about two minutes ago.

  There’s an inevitable end to a situation like this and it’s never a happy one.

  So far, I’ve managed to keep my legs pointing in the right direction. This changes just as I think my heart is going to jump out of my mouth and slope off for a nice quiet cup of coffee, leaving the rest of me to it.

  My legs buckle and I wobble about on the treadmill like a three hundred mile an hour drunk.

  The top half of my body is thrown forward, while the bottom half is catapulted backward by the maniacal treadmill.

  It also flings me off to the side, which I’m grateful for as it saves me head-butting the bar in front.

  In a freakish defiance of all the laws of physics, I hurtle sideways, forwards, backwards and upwards all at once - clearing the treadmill with exactly the opposite amount of grace a fourteen year old Russian gymnast has when dismounting the parallel bars.

  Amazingly, I land on my feet. Quite how, I don’t know. I guess the laws of physics have by now given up on the whole debacle and gone to join my heart at Starbucks for a latté and a doughnut.

  I don’t stay on my feet for long and collapse onto the nearby weights bench.

  I look up and can see some people are still watching me with a mixture of amusement and concern.

  Bastards.

  It’s like none of them ever had a first session at the gym and nearly killed themselves trying to over-achieve. I won’t give them the satisfaction of watching me buckle!

  I should have got my breath back and limped off into the changing rooms, giving up the fight there and then - but I didn’t.

  My body was distraught, but my brain was full of angry determination.

  The brain won by a technical knock-out.

  Instead of doing the sensible thing and leaving, I start lifting weights.

  What a fucking idiot.

  As my eyesight still wasn’t firing on all cylinders, it took me a few moments to set the right amount of weight I thought I could manage in a bench press.

  I stretched myself out on the bench, clasped the bar and tried to lift.

  And tried a bit more…

  And a bit more…

  By now my face is the same colour as a baboon’s arse and my eyes are standing two inches out from their sockets.

  I reset the weight to a more acceptable amount - half what it was - and try again.

  This time, the bar goes up and I start to feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger as I pump away merrily. The fact a nine year old girl could have probably lifted the amount I had on there didn’t trouble me in the least.

  I got to about twenty reps (see? I know all the technical terms) before something went twang! in my back.

  The pain was horrendous.

  I didn’t cry out, but I’m fairly sure the low, plaintive whine that came out of my mouth carried across the gym anyway.

  The weights came back down with a crash as I finally – finally – gave up the struggle and accepted my fate.

  I stayed on the bench for a good couple of minutes, doing half-arsed stretches with my arms to hide the fact that I could barely move the rest of my body.

  Eventually, when I’d decided most of my audience had gone back to toning their buns of steel, I got up and made my crippled way back to the locker room.

  Have you seen Dawn Of The Dead?

  I would have made a fantastic addition to the film’s cast.

  I groaned and limped my way to the sanctuary of the changing room, not turning my head to look at my fellow exercisers. This wasn’t because I was trying to ignore them, it was because turning my head was virtually impossible.

  It took me over twenty minutes to get changed into my street clothes - each movement punctuated with a low mewling noise and a series of shooting pains down my back.

  Leaving the building and getting into my car, I vowed that next time - if there was a next time - I’d take things a bit easier and ignore the sneers and superior looks of the annoyingly hyper-fit gym denizens.

  It took me two weeks to recover from my second trip to the gym, before returning for the third and final time.

  Nothing horrendous
occurred. I’d learned my lessons and didn’t intend to repeat the same mistakes again.

  Clad in the same keep fit get-up as before, I re-entered the scene of my brush with death, intent on getting something worthwhile out of the experience.

  Luckily, the gym was nearly empty.

  Well, it wasn’t luck, really. I just went at half past nine in the evening on a Tuesday, when I knew the place would be deserted.

  Things went well for a while.

  I used the treadmill again and managed a good ten minutes of light jogging before the black dots appeared in front of my eyes. I did a spot of rowing, which made me feel very manly and a bit like Sir Steve Redgrave.

  I ran into trouble - of the psychological kind, rather the physical - when I came to use the nautilus machine.

  This, for those of you that don’t know, is a contraption of pure evil.

  It’s a multi-use piece of high resistance weight lifting equipment that looks like a medieval torture device. The type of thing that’d give Torquemada a hard-on.

  Undeterred, I sallied forth into my nautilus experience with cheer in my heart and passion in my soul.

  I got into the thing easily and it only took a second to figure out how to use it: Insert arms here, place legs here, thrust and repeat.

  I elected for the full nautilus work out and started to do leg presses, as well as butterfly crunches with my arms.

  I was sweating. I was pumping. I was achieving the buns of steel I’d been promised.

  There was a bank of large mirrors on the wall opposite me.

  The kind I’m sure are just ever so slightly warped to make you think you’re wider than you really are.

  Everything was hunky dory until I caught sight of myself in that mirror.

  There I was, arms and legs akimbo like a puppy dog on its back, waiting for a tickle. My hair was stood up in sweaty spikes and the baggy muscle shirt I wore did nothing to accent my physique in the slightest. I was also red-faced and grimacing.

  My exercise hobby came to an end at that moment.

  Yes, I may have been working the glutes and toning the abs.

  Yes, I may have been burning calories and losing fat.