Sunday, January 18, 2009

Pool rage

This morning I had breakfast with a blogger! The Divine Ms M is, I'm pleased to report, every bit as divine as her name suggests and we have agreed that our next meeting will involve wine rather than sausages and eggs.

Unfortunately I was a lot less divine - I woke up feeling fairly crap and sadly as our breakfast continued so did the nasty feeling that something had gone distinctly awry inside my body.

A stressful yet boozy week is inevitably to blame and the result was a sordid little moment on the way home when I had to pull over in the middle of a very posh part of west London and dispel said breakfast. I have never done that before and I don't intend to repeat the experience. All most unpleasant and embarrassing, and a complete waste of a meal in one of my favourite weekend breakfast haunts.

By 6pm I was feeling just about human again so decided to take myself down to the gym for a jacuzzi/sauna pampering session (which I don't think I'll be mentioning to my trainer. She has told me in no uncertain terms that *nothing* I am currently doing is conducive to weight loss, sigh).

I was floating around in the jacuzzi on my own, thinking rude thoughts (does anyone else find all those bubbles mildly arousing?) when I heard raised voices coming from the direction of the pool. My hearing isn't great and without my lenses I am comically if hopelessly shortsighted but even I could understand the problem: a rather large and very aggressive lady who was taking up most of the fast lane and absolutely refusing to swim clockwise in it like everybody else.

Cue much shouting and arm waving (well, it wasn't exactly easy to swim around her either) as Large Lady insisted that she was in the right and they were all wrong. Eventually they got so cross that they all stomped over into the middle lane and then moved the lane rope so instead of the fast lane it became a Large Lady Lane and they had a bigger lane for all their speedy strokes.

I was inwardly applauding their ingenuity and wishing one could do this in other walks of life, like when one is driving behind somebody very slow who will not go any higher than 2nd gear. How lovely to just be able to create their own little slow lane and zoom off at one's own pace.

Large Lady didn't seem to be too pleased with the solution though and got out. At that point a hapless member of staff came along, just to take a sample of the water. Terrible timing. She chewed his ear off for about 10 minutes and then everybody else piled in to tell their side: apparently she is well-known in these parts for being a swimming offender(interesting accolade).

Then she got back into the pool - in the middle lane - I suppose to make a point (honestly has the woman no shame?). The exasperated fast laners moved back over and took their lane rope with them.

Unfortunately then I realised that I'd been in the jacuzzi for so long that my skin had turned to mush so I got out and hit the sauna to dry out. I saw her waddling in the direction of the showers shortly afterwards so I suppose she admitted defeat in the end. I shall look out for her in future. She's the most entertaining thing in this gym by miles.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Bad Zu! Wasting a good breakfast :-P I do hope you feel better now though hun! As for your gym, my god, I never had that much entertainment in any of the ones I've joined in the past.

zuzula said...

i know... it's worth the extortionate monthly fee in itself. Forget the treadmill... the pool is where it's at!

The Divine Miss M said...

Aaaww I featured! :)

Was so good to meet you but next time is DEFINITELY a piss up!

We should so get Peas to fly over for it now that she is a wolrd famous novelist ;)

Lucy said...

Am very impressed by these blogger dates you go on!

zuzula said...

Miss M - for sure! great to see you :)

Confuddled - i am enjoying my little cyber forays too!