Here I go again, trying to find trouble where trouble is to be found. In the same way I will continue to defend Sint Nikolaas and Zwarte Piet as if my life depended on it, I’m going to defend the right of beautiful women to exercise in their own living room. Come on, have you ever been to a fitness club? I have, and I can tell you that two types of women go there to work out.
The first group of women (this applies to men too, by the way) are hopelessly overweight and need to lose weight to avoid medical complications. In some cases, whether they need a fitness bike or a plastic surgeon can be debated.
The second group comprises young women who usually come in twos or threes and, from their general appearance, seem to have just had a free session at Ici-Paris XL before indiscreetly going in to the ladies changing room, making sure that they have duly been noticed. Do they need to work out? Well the answer is yes. Not because they have to lose weight, but because one of them has to catch up with the latest office gossip as related by the other two.
I used to go to the gym and use their exercise bike for an hour or so. I went there because it was the only place where I could read Françoise Sagan without being disturbed. Placing the iPad on the bike’s dashboard that has more numbers than I’ve had hot dinners, I was in heaven, inundated by the exquisite prose of Boujour Tristesse. Until the aforementioned damsels decided to do the same, only without the iPad. Yep, for them, the gym was not about purifying body and mind but for getting up to date about ongoings in an office none of us in the gym cared about but all of us in the gym were forced to hear. Having to put up with “bang-bang” music (you know, the music that resembles the noise your neighbour makes when he’s banging a hammer against the wall) is bad enough, but the repeated presence of these women was the last straw. I stopped going and preferred to use my bike in the cold and wet Dutch countryside instead.
All this to tell you that if my wife had bought me an exercise bike for Christmas, I would have been delighted.
Peleton is the latest big name to come into trouble with women’s lib. But it poses the more general question of what we poor blighters buy our loved-ones for Christmas.
Well let’s see now what’s left on the Christmas list:
- perfume – why? do I smell bad,
- money – no, I’m an independent woman,
- cooking pans – bloody hell no.
- Clothes – what? don’t I dress proper?
- Shoes? do you want me to leave you?
- a book – do I look like the person who has time to read?
- a cleaning lady – no it’s my house, I keep it clean
- a nanny – come on, he’s 18 (yes, I answer, and so’s the nanny!)
- a trip to Paris – no, we’ve been there dozens of times
I’ve got it – A GIFT VOUCHER. That’s really giving a beautiful Christmas present.
“Hey wait a minute,” she says. “Have you REALLY run out of ideas on how to please me?”
“Come on my love, what do you really want for Christmas?”
“When you married me, you promised me the moon.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“You promised me the moon so, GIVE ME THE MOON!”