Personal Training

Every so often a teeny tiny bit of glamour wiggles its way into my otherwise humdrum life, and it would be a shocking waste not to brag about it.

Try this:

            I’d been invited by my agent to the swanky (there’s no other word that does the job quite as well as swanky)  Tower Restaurant  on the top floor of the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, to meet the blonde fiction editor of HarperCollins books, who’d flown up from London for the occasion.

            Dressed head-to-foot in understated daywear (mmm, daywear - another word I’ve never used before, like swanky), and sporting excellent new shoes, I aimed to give the impression that I was always this groomed.

            It was all going quite well until I opened my mouth. You see, if I’d thought a bit more about what the meeting was all about rather than squandering so many hours trying to achieve that crucial sexy/serious balance with the new shoes, I’d have realised that both the HarperCollins lady and my agent were kind of hoping to hear about what I was going to write next. The question came about ten minutes in, after introductions and pleasantries, whatever pleasantries are:

            “So, Erica, tell us what you’re planning to write next?”

            Years passed, tumbleweed rolled by and I saw that the lady at the next table had a hole in her tights. Her boots had a smudge of mud on the heel and her cardigan was slipping off the back of her chair. Waiters walked past in slow motion and outside, the sky seemed to darken.

My reply, when I forced it out an octave or so higher than usual, fell quite a way short of the unputdownable blockbuster outline which I now realise had been expected.

            “Ooh, I don’t know! What sort of thing are you looking for?”

            I could only watch forlornly as my street cred flew out the window and across the grey Edinburgh rooftops. The understated daywear didn’t matter any more and the shoes had been no help as I waited, shiny-eyed, to be spoon-fed a plot. Still, I did pick up one useful nugget:

            “You do a bit of running, don’t you? Do you have a personal trainer? We’d love something on our list involving one of those!”

            Well, I didn’t, but I do now.

            Only mine isn’t a brooding, enigmatic hunk of love called Vlad with a tragic past, commitment issues and a breathtaking skill for making my body do things I never realised it was capable of.

            Mine’s called Sharon and she hurts.

            “Come on, give me fifty more! One, two, three…”

“Fifty?? I can barely do five!”

“Yes you can! Ten, eleven, twelve…”

            “That was sixteen!” I whimper. For I have been counting as though my very life depended upon it.

            “I’m the teacher! Come on, thirteen, fourteen…”

            And so it goes on. Every week, my friend and I take ourselves off for an hour of personal training that makes normal exercise classes seem like a doze on the sofa.

            I didn’t realise it would be as sore as it is. I kind of hoped that the mere act of going along to a personal trainer would tone up the muscles a treat; that there was some sort of secret to being personally trained that made it grown-up and painless.

            Fat chance. We squat and lunge and lift weights and do sit-ups and skip and just when we think our legs are about to fall off, we do them all over again. And again.

            It’s brilliant. Mainly because we know we’re in the hands of a proper expert. Sharon manages to reach the parts that a run round the block doesn’t touch, and she empathises, too. Last week I was feeling rubbish but tried to soldier on. Ten minutes in and she pointed at me.

“You’re not well! Go and sit down!”

“I’m okay…”

“No you’re not! Go and sit down!”

 I nearly wept with gratitude and stumbled dizzily to a chair.

In the days that follow our session my friend and I send each other happy texts saying things like “I feel fab! I can’t sit down!” And the reply comes: “Me too! Can’t move my arms! Am on the Nurofen! Woo-hoo!”

I think there is a book in there somewhere, but it wouldn’t be what HarperCollins was expecting. And that, unfortunately in the publishing world, is not a good thing. Anyone know any personal trainers called Vlad?