Lord Gym

And another thing. As this seems to be functioning as my online diary, I should record that I bought ten sessions of personal training at the gym as a sort-of birthday present. I can't decide if I'm enjoying it, but I like Alex, my trainer, very much - a 25-year-old rugby player with arms the size of tractors, beautiful shoulders (it's nice to have something to look at while you're being tortured) and a quiet sense of humour.

I'm alarmed by how much he has contradicted a lot of the advice I have been given about how not to further knacker my back and knees, but as I'm neither dead nor crippled yet, he may have a point, even if it does involve bending with a straight back holding a 25kg bar. He talks about "restoring normal function" as something that I can do, which nobody (doctors, chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapists, pilates teacher) has ever done before. Oddly, this raised my hackles - I don't know why. There is obviously a part of me that likes my clicking, creaking, aching joints as they are and would be perturbed to have "normal function" back again (after 21 years). Truly, people are very odd, and I include myself in that. Is uniqueness, even in the degree of individual joint-buggeration, so very desirable?

(Having said this, I can still make him blench by threatening to make him hold my knee while I move it through its full range. It feels/sounds like shaking muesli in a box.)