This was completely brilliant.  Good exercise, lively, fun, and best of all – it is not at all embarrassing to be crap at it! 

(I was scarred some years ago by an aerobics experience that involved me flailing around, completely unable to keep up with a class full of pros, in a room with a mirror all along the wall that we were all forced to face… so there was literally nowhere to hide, and I was stuck there for an hour.  And I’d gone on my own, so there wasn’t even anyone to laugh about it with.  Ouch.)

So this time, I went to a class that a friend recommended, and took another novice friend with me, but I needn’t have worried. 

The instructor was a feisty bundle of yelping, whooping energy (in an engaging rather than annoying way): a vision of muscles and pink lycra gyrating rhythmically at the front of the room.  

Each routine was contained, and fairly short-lived, so if you didn’t get the hang of it there was something else soon after.  And even if you couldn’t do it properly, you could do some sort of movement that wasn’t too conspicuously ‘wrong’!   In any case most folk were too absorbed in what they were doing to look around.

There is a dilemma for me with things like this: to follow what is going on I really need to be at the front with a good view – but that of course gives the rest of the room an excellent view of the back of me…   I weighed it up and stayed at the back.  

I imagine I will ache tomorrow – many muscles used and positions adopted that felt somewhat unfamiliar!  But overall another triumph, a really enjoyable experience.  I would go again!  (Except I still have 95 other things to do before May!)

(Thank you very much to Meryl Miller – Stratton Village Hall class at 9.30 am Mondays and Stratton School Hall 8pm Tuesdays)