AMBY AWARDS TOP PICK 2023 ❤️
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"You think I can't act like I'm into you?" He asks in a whisper. He reaches out, and strokes a finger down my cheek, and I feel myself shiver at the touch.
"You think I can't convince everyone that I have f...
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Fast forward to the following Tuesday evening . . .
Oh god, it's hot.
Oh so very hot. I'm burning up. Breathing hard.
My body is slick with sweat as I lower myself down . . . into what is probably my thirtieth squat in the last ten minutes. I know I have to move onto my next round of burpees now, and I really, really don't want to do any more of those. Burpees are the devil.
Actually, I revise, even Satan would possibly renounce himself, and change his ways, just to avoid having to do even just one rep of that particularly hellish move.
"Come on, girls!" My instructor Tilly shouts from the front of the studio. "You've only got three minutes left! Get your arses into gear!"
Contrary to what you might think, I am not in some sort of boot camp, or CrossFit. (I actually did a one-off free trial of a CrossFit class once. I couldn't hold my body up straight for approximately five days afterwards.)
"No, you come on, Tilly!" Kim yells back at the petite blonde. She's halfway through a press- up, about a full round ahead of me, and barely puffed out, much to my chagrin. "Do you have to be such a slave-driver? This isn't the army; it's a pole fitness class for God's sake!"
Tilly laughs. It's okay for her. She's sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing Words With Friends on her phone, while the rest of us try not to die. "Just trying to get you strong for the pole," she shrugs. She always insists on five minute of stretching, followed by ten minutes of torture, before we're even allowed to touch the poles. She says it's important to build up our cores, and arms, and . . . Stuff like that. I don't always listen to the technical bits.
(Incidentally, why is it that every time I mention "the pole" it automatically makes my sentence sound suggestive?)
I said before how I often like to take up new hobbies after a break-up, didn't I? Well, pole fitness was the hobby I opted for after my split from Jamie, the ex before Declan.
We won't even go into the disaster that was Jamie. Let's just say, he borrowed a lot of money from me that I never saw again . . . and one of my friends saw his freshly-created profile on a dating app while we were still going out.
When I'd confronted him about it, he'd said he hadn't realised we were exclusive.
We'd been seeing each other for 18 months at that point.
I really know how to pick 'em, eh?
Anyway, in amongst my misery after that break-up, I'd spotted some pole fitness clips on YouTube and it had piqued my interest immediately. I'd found a class, enlisted Kim to actually force me to go through with it, and quickly became a little bit addicted.
